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Have attention spans been declining?

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Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#261

Post by colechristensen »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #122
colechristensen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also now I have a magical machine in my pocket where I can tap the screen a few times and get a book read to me sped up to my optimal input speed. Those two things (audiobooks on my phone, the default feature to enable play at 2x-3x speed) have vastly increased the information I absorb. Now if only someone could come up with a screen/document reader with a decent text-to-speech and decent content filtering, it wo…

You can listen and understand faster than you can read and understand? I am far quicker at reading than listening.

Yes, sort of.

While I can utilize speed-reading techniques for some content somewhat faster than I can listen, it is an all-hands-on-deck situation attention wise and extremely sensitive to interruption.

On the other hand I can push 3x or faster depending on the narrator for audio content in most situations and 2x while doing nearly anything (the only exceptions being literally trying to carry on a conversation with a person or driving fast on a mountain switchback road).

I don't do "ordinary" reading particularly well due to my own brand of vision issues + ADHD/neurodivergence/whatever label is in vogue. This is a bit sad for me, but I've obviously got workarounds.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#262

Post by makeitdouble »

nonethewiser wrote: post #176
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…

> There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Attention span cannot be measured by what we don’t pay attention to. And there has always - always - been more information than anyone could process. I think it quite obviously is determined by how long we pay attention to things we chose to engage with. Clearly watching 15 second short clips instead of readi…

> reading books

This rhetoric is partly why reading gets such a bad rap. So many people put "reading books" on a pedestal, and cite random educational studies on how the mere act of reading stimulates the brain and is beneficial in itself.

But 90% of the books in this world are fucking boring to downright garbage and not worth reading for most people. Telling people to read "books" is as helpful as advising suburban kids to go "places" and see them stay home after the fifth trip to Wallmart.

Would a random kid be better off reading "Rich dad Poor dad" than try to fix the brake cable of his bike ? Should they read "The Boys from Biloxi" or go to a theater with their friends and have an actual social exchange with a real human ? Are the dozens of self help books pusblished every week better than their Substack equivalent ?

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#263

Post by cubefox »

pier25 wrote: post #240

I've noticed that I rarely properly read anything online anymore. 90% of the time I'm just scanning or skimming. I do focus on stuff for extended periods of time like watching a movie, reading a book, working on something, etc.

> I do focus on stuff for extended periods of time like watching a movie, reading a book, working on something, etc.

Note that watching a movie requires far less attention than reading a book. Movies, first, are compressed stories (movie scripts are less than a hundred pages) where, second, nothing is left to the imagination. I'd bet that people read much fewer books today than before video streaming became popular, or before TV went mainstream. (I do rarely watch movies, but I mostly stopped reading books since I bought a smartphone.)

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#264

Post by Modified3019 »

I also highly recommend at least the first few of the Chemical Hunger series as well: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/

While not without it’s problems (which is to be expected considering the impossibly complex subject matter), It does a fantastic job detailing how the obesity epidemic is not some kind of oversimplified moral sin issue where we all suddenly became gluttonous (“just eat less!”) and slothful (“just do more”).

The major thing I find lacking is the omission of just how much the many different types of fatty and amino acids also act as major chemical signals that ultimately[0] affect whether your body tries to burn energy “wastefully” for heat, or tries to store it. The articles leans toward environmental chemicals as being the primary effectors subtly acting on our metabolism, but the very food we eat is itself a massive load of chemicals with complex effects that we can’t ignore.

[0] The next time someone wanting to feel clever and smug about it says “calories in, calories out” or “muh thermodynamics”, send them this: http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#265

Post by kshacker »

Terr_ wrote: post #211
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #112

Permit me to tie a couple of personal observation on this topic. I do not think we "lost" our ability. I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". As we all have heard, to become an expert, on average we need to pursue the subject for 10 thousand hours (? Malcolm Gladwell). But, we do not need to spend 20 years practicing. We can obtain "good enough" in a…

> I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". [...] For example, to win [a famous baguette competition] many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. Hasn't it always been that way, though? Decades or centuries ago we've been doing things (e.g. breadmaking) with fewer resources and worse tools and tighter margins, so "good enough" was probably even more i…

My attention span is making me re-read your comment to decipher whether I agree or disagree. Jury is still out on this one :)

Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality of the presentation (audio, music, harmony within the team) and was thinking on the same lines - good vs good enough, and how this team working in the 70s made musical magic.

I think the constraints those days made the masters really practice practice practice so that they could be great at the spur of the moment. A lot of people today may be more expert in synthesizing music so they can take a second's worth of snippet here, 5 seconds of snippets there, and eventually make something good, but it is all editing and they may not be able to do that live, but the old timey greats had to perform live, and for that they had to be great.

I am not saying no one does live music nowadays, quite the contrary, just saying that a lot of great music comes from people who never do live music, and that is because they can afford the luxury of 'editing' (which is kinda similar to divided attention span). Similarly, for the baker once the bread has gone bad there is nothing they can do but to start over, and that would be the incentive to get everything right.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#266

Post by colechristensen »

dv35z wrote: post #165
colechristensen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also now I have a magical machine in my pocket where I can tap the screen a few times and get a book read to me sped up to my optimal input speed. Those two things (audiobooks on my phone, the default feature to enable play at 2x-3x speed) have vastly increased the information I absorb. Now if only someone could come up with a screen/document reader with a decent text-to-speech and decent content filtering, it wo…

I used Amazon Polly (text to speech engine) on a project a few years ago - the “neural” voices were decent. I’ve since heard much better synthetic voice engines, but don’t know names. What’s the best quality one you have found recently?

My interests are in local inference, so a service like Amazon Polly doesn't fit my needs.

I haven't tried anything so far that I actually liked so my answer to "what's the best quality I have found?" is none.

The reverse though, OpenAI's Whisper for speech to text has been amazing, far exceeding my expectations.

Having just looked again I found a list at huggingface that I will be poking through in my spare time soon.

https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-to-speech&so...

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#267

Post by deprecative »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #162
Night_Thastus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some good reasons this isn't the case. Often the submission title itself has something wrong in it, or is click-bait-y, or just needs some pointless fat trimmed from it to get to the point. It's definitely not black and white.

But if the source can't get the title right in a clean and objective sort or way, isn't that a signal for "there's got to be a better source"? For example, how many times have we've seen a click-bait-y title followed by content or narrative reflective of that mindset?

Click bait makes money. Unless some special magic is going on with a publication they'll all use click bait titles.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#268

Post by ethanbond »

makeitdouble wrote: post #262
nonethewiser wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Attention span cannot be measured by what we don’t pay attention to. And there has always - always - been more information than anyone could process. I think it quite obviously is determined by how long we pay attention to things we chose to engage with. Clearly watching 15 second short clips instead of readi…

> reading books This rhetoric is partly why reading gets such a bad rap. So many people put "reading books" on a pedestal, and cite random educational studies on how the mere act of reading stimulates the brain and is beneficial in itself. But 90% of the books in this world are fucking boring to downright garbage and not worth reading for most people. Telling people to read "books" is as helpful as advising suburban…

They should definitely read whatever interests them so when they want to acquire useful knowledge (like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work), they have access to tons and tons of written material on that topic.

It’s odd how you’re acting like you’re making an argument against the general imperative to read books, but your examples are people being requested to read specific books which may or may not be useful and/or interesting to the reader.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#269

Post by Treblemaker »

Eumenes wrote: post #260
ImaCake wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fool’s opinion. Spend some time reading what people diagnosed with ADHD say about their disorder. Medication merely makes them able to keep up some of the time.

I've heard and met many - its just hearsay to me. Fools believe hearsay. Until there's some advanced blood test or biological marker, the diagnosis is complex social engineering or at best, pseudoscience.

The perception that ADHD is nothing more than the inability to "sit still and pay attention" is very wrong and very out of date. Before you comment further I would strongly recommend you watch a series presented by one of the leading researchers in neurological basis of ADHD, Dr. Russell Barkley, called "ADHD: "The 30 Essential Ideas Every Parent Needs to Know" [1].

I struggled with many of these things -- primarily time blindness, executive function and impulsiveness -- for most of my almost six decade life, and finally understanding what was happening -- and getting help for it -- has been life-changing.

As one friend put it, he would cut off his left testicle if it meant having working executive function. The idea that I -- and friends and acquaintances who share similar experiences -- are faking it is ignorant and insulting. That you do not suffer is a gift; be grateful. Maybe don't be so dismissive of the struggles and suffering of others.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh4RKnr7ygXsO1ImoyB0K...

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#270

Post by cafeinux »

episiarch wrote: post #181
n0on3 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm not sure if you were joking or not and I know it's probably not in the same spirit you intended it here / a bit OT but...) I've been using literally that exact expression for a while to describe the situation in which, during somewhat complex discussions within a group, in order to not be perceived as jerks participants are forced to follow an unnecessarily long, repetitive, trivial and most often also completel…

I didn't even have the attention span to unpack your first sentence.

They said: When many words said, no listen more, so say "attention span overflow" instead of yawn.
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