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Have attention spans been declining?

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Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#301

Post by gochi »

Eumenes wrote: post #255
gochi wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea that people are getting drugs to acquire victimhood points is so detached from reality, I am pleading with you, please spend less time on social media. It is not healthy and is changing your entire worldview. Your first swing at a reason doesn't make any sense either, as ADHD numbers have not solely affected adults. Even if you account for those "just wanting to be productive" by apparently ruining their en…

Collecting disorders and faking mental illness is a very hot at the moment, esp. among children (and troubled adults) - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/29/well/mind/tiktok-mental-i... The number of people in my life diagnosed with various disorders, with accompanying drugs, via short meetings with doctors they've met once is staggering. Re: children, do you know many parents? I know many and many of their children ar…

All your linked article suggests is that some are turning to social media to find explanations for their behaviors. Nowhere does it suggest that there is a notable increase in fake diagnosis that results in accessing pharmaceuticals, or that anyone takes a fake diagnosis more seriously than the traditional route.

There is zero evidence that there is an increase of people who are diagnosed via short meetings and immediately drugged especially when the drugs are under far heavier restrictions than say Ozempic.

The rest is anecdotal, just as easily as you say you've met so many who have been diagnosed and drugged, I can say I have not met many. Most of them seem very anti-diagnosis even when it's clearly affecting them due to this stigma. Yet you'll discount my position because it's anecdotal.

If you think your worldview holds water, why are there so many studies proving the efficacy of both non-stimulant and stimulant drugs in trials that are double-blind, placebo controlled, and using parallel groups? (eg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000197/) Shouldn't it be identical to placebo for reducing ADHD symptoms?

Far more interesting to me is how you've met so many neurodivergent people. Many studies have talked about subconscious biases of those who are neurotypical (eg: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5286449/) which goes both ways, as we gravitate to those most similar to us. Unless you're a social worker or creating statistical anomalies in your head of course.

Are there people out there who have been drugged by their parents without having a real problem? Probably. But these are parents who would go through a hundred doctors to find one who can be bought, as now they would have to specifically avoid the plethora of alternative solutions doctors offer due to ADHD stigma (stigma noted in papers like https://sites.ucmerced.edu/files/laura-hamilton/files/metzge...).

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#302

Post by dottjt »

cratermoon wrote: post #243
dottjt wrote: post #199

I'm surprised no one here has mentioned mindfulness (is briefly mentioned in the article). It pretty much solves this problem. But I guess that's part of the issue, is that the problem directly obfuscates the solution, so the problem remains prevalent.

There's also the problem that "mindfulness" is itself obfuscated to mean something specific about autonomy, individual power, and personal freedom. This is a problem because it assumes attention occurs within a fixed cultural and economic framework as an individual commodity that can be traded. It's very transactional. The practice of attention beyond what the mindfulness movement has co-opted includes attention to t…

I don't personally see that. What you're saying to me, feels like an interpretation of what you think mindfulness is.

Which is perfectly valid, it's just I've never personally associated mindfulness with any of the things you describe.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#303

Post by [deleted] »

karaterobot wrote: post #120
Tenoke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Disagree. Article titles on the web are often very bad. Often this is for clickbait reasons, but also frequently just because the author was not writing for the HN front page as their audience. Almost always, I prefer the rewritten headlines on HN. However, this seems labor intensive to accomplish, and there is usually a delay before the edited title appears. What I wish is for article submitters to consider the use…

[deleted]

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#305

Post by gms7777 »

BirdieNZ wrote: post #298
pwpw wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Final anecdote to "prove" my point we did not lose our attention. I have taken ADHD-diagnosed boys to camp and fish. Of the twelve (ages 12-16), only one could not sit patiently and watch the line and bobber for extended period. You’re completely misrepresenting ADHD, so I don’t see how this anecdote proves your point. ADHD isn’t the inability to focus. In fact, it often comes with the ability to hyperfocus better…

> society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD. As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I think this misrepresents ADHD. There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage; in a hunter-gatherer society, my tent would still be untidy and I'd still procrastinate fixing my spear before the hunt until the day before, and I'd still lose focus during the hunt and miss the deer walking pa…

I'm not the person you were responding with you, and I completely agree with you, but I think there is a more charitable reading of that statement which I also think is true.

There is no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage. But I think there are forms of society in which ADHD is less of a disadvantage. Another way of putting it is that ADHD is inherently a disability on it's own, but there are ways that a lot of our society is set up that exacerbate those problems. Just as there are ways to improve accessibility in spaces for those with physical disabilities, and that doesn't stop them from being disabilities, there are also ways that there could be cultural shifts and choices made to improve accessibility for those with ADHD.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#306

Post by Terr_ »

kshacker wrote: post #265
Terr_ wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ma…

I think my underlying thesis probably renders to something like:

The idea that people in the past had personalities that valued the pursuit of perfection more-highly than now is often assumed, but seldom is good evidence given to support it. In many cases it may be explained by survivorship-bias or by applying inaccurate modern assumptions about the relative costs of different materials/labor and the prestige/rarity of events.

> 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

Example "humans weren't fundamentally different" hypothesis: When it is more expensive to make multiple attempts, people invest more effort into making sure they do very good attempts, in order to avoid the downside risk. This does not mean they would not have gladly chosen an average-result if dramatically lower production costs were possible. Therefore the difference does not stem from a change in mentality, but from economic factors.

___________

It's kind of like looking at airplanes of the 1950s, with beds and champagne and caviar, and ruefully comparing them to the ones of the 2020s.

Is it because airlines became greedier? Did the average passenger (in the same income-bracket) lose their desire for fine things? Nah: It's probably because once you remember to adjust for inflation, those 1950s passengers were paying $7,300 per flight instead of today's $600.

[0] https://www.eastcoastdaily.in/2021/01/02/1950s-when-airplane...

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#307

Post by contravariant »

inopinatus wrote: post #295
ceejayoz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span". Perhaps the submitter's attention span ran out.

“75% chance of rain”: 1. It will definitely rain, on 75% of the relevant area. 2. It will definitely rain, for 75% of the relevant time period. 3. It will rain with an intensity of 75% of the maximum our instruments can measure. 4. Three out of four meteorologists think it will rain. 5. It will rain on 75% of the population. 6. It will rain on everyone, but 75% of the population forgot their umbrella. 7. It will rai…

11. The betting pool amongst meteorologists has 3:1 odds for rain.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#308

Post by h2odragon »

cubefox wrote: post #296
Zetice wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Well, Aaronson is also a leading quantum computing researcher, and Alexander is read by respected scholars, such as the psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker, or the economist Bryan Caplan.

"Quantum Computing" is a cult with commercial interests / investor scams.

I'm even more cynical about the economists.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#309

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.

Some headlines are absurdly long and don’t fit in the HN title box.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#310

Post by axiomaticdoubts »

Modified3019 wrote: post #264

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…

Those posts have grave errors, which the authors have been made aware of long ago but have refused to fix. For example, they literally made up the claim that wild animals have been getting more obese (there is no evidence of that). See this post I wrote for more details: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...
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