Have attention spans been declining? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#321

Post by hollerith » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #314

cubefox wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Safety issues" are to him more like, "the AI will kill everyone to fill its objectives" Yes, and he was way ahead of the curve here, since similar positions got a lot more mainstream in the past years and months. E.g. two of three AI Turing award winners (Hinton and Bengio) now say that superintelligent AI poses a serious extinction risk. OpenAI has also identified the alignment problem as a major issue. Even form…

None of those people you mentioned share Yudkowsky’s conclusion that air strikes against data centers are warranted.

Do you have a citation for that?

I know how to find the statements by Hinton and Benigo that superintelligent AI poses a serious extinction risk, but I can't find any statements by Hinton and Benigo--or anyone who is taking the risk seriously--suggesting that air strikes would not be warranted, so any clues on where to look would be appreciated.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#322

Post by cubefox » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:11 AM UTC

Zetice wrote: post #299

cubefox wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So? That means nothing as to the quality or even topic of their blog content. Unless blogs started receiving peer review while I wasn't paying attention, there's likely a reason any given content lives there and not in an academic paper.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852187

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#323

Post by gruez » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

Zetice wrote: post #289

cubefox wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LessWrong is obviously not a cult, the allegations are nonsense. Well established researchers post there (e.g. Paul Christiano) and some even work or worked for OpenAI or DeepMind (e.g. Richard Ngo). It's rather that the cited source "RationalWiki" is a highly politically biased source which routinely attacks anything which is in any way associated with the rationalism community, or which engages with things that are…

[flagged]

This excerpt from the article on Scott Alexander on RationalWiki is the only thing I need to quote to make others understand the stakes here.

>As usual, you can make anything worse by adding Reddit. /r/slatestarcodex is an unofficial fan forum for the blog. Scott comments occasionally and is a moderator. The culture wars (a regular weekly thread, until it was recently branched off to the Scott-endorsed /r/themotte) and pseudoscientific racialism of "human biodiversity" are regular and upvoted topics (literally advocating the Fourteen Words will get you 40+ upvotes[45] and admiring replies). Of course, much more offensive than the racism is objecting to the racism, which gets you a day's ban.[46] According to one moderator, "A belief in HBD doesn’t automatically equate to racism", somehow.

I also invite people to visit citations 45 and 46. The corresponding claims in the article might technically be true, but I think they're mislealding to say the least.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#324

Post by Nick87633 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:45 AM UTC

cafeinux wrote: post #270

episiarch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reordering and paraphrasing what they actually wrote:

I've been using that expression when giving up on participating during discussions.

Other people's line of reasoning are unnecessarily long, repetitive, trivial and most often also completely pointless. This derails my own productive/actually-interesting argument because I only have so much mental energy.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#325

Post by idiocrat » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:53 AM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #307

inopinatus wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

4:1

I know what you did here. I am taking my Mg/K supplements to keep up my attention.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#326

Post by smukherjee19 » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 1:59 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #115

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…

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…

That's an interesting take on having books read to you!

I am genuinely curious though: what do you do with the information you absorb? Are you able to retain all of it and use it at will? If so, do you have any tips on how to do that?

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#327

Post by makeitdouble » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:02 AM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #268

makeitdouble wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> like what to do when the obvious brake cable fix doesn’t work

The interesting thing: those useful information probably aren't seen as "books" even when they're in written form. The obvious example is the repair manual in PDF on the brake maker's site. Or the blog explaining how they dealt with their vintage bike's brake cable.

Of course that information is probably actually a youtube video (I refresh every single components of a bike with a toolkit from amazon and hours of youtube videos with Shimano's PDFs on the side)

> 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.

You're right. I should be clear that I find the very premise of pushing people to do a category of activity pretty odd. I wouldn't tell people to "go watch internet videos" or "go study academics" or "do some sport". If I'm close to them, such a generic advice would be dumb, and if I don't know their life, I shouldn't be throwing random platitudes at them either.

From that point of view, "read books" doesn't make any sense, and If I had to say something I'd come up with an actual thing that could benefit them.

The same way I'm kinda wary of people explaining they read X books a month. This feels like they don't see books as individual items, but as a KPI, which is weirding me out.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#328

Post by cratermoon » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:08 AM UTC

dottjt wrote: post #302

cratermoon wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I've never personally associated mindfulness with any of the things you describe

What is mindfulness, to you? What sorts of practices and contexts do you experience as mindfulness?

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#329

Post by makeitdouble » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

djangelic wrote: post #278

ethanbond wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with what you are saying. Much like a muscle, when you work out, you're not lifting weights so you can lift more weights later. Your general strength is higher, so most physical tasks are easier. Same for reading, if you practice reading books and enjoy looking at the written word, then reading developer documentation doesn't seem as intimidating which opens more doors for you.

My counterargument would be about why you need to lift weights in the first place ?

Some people like lifting weight, sure. But if your goal is to carry injured big dogs in your medical center, you won't be lifting random weights, nor doing generic workout. And you might not even do that in a gym, you could as well train with healthy dogs and get an actual feel of their weight distribution.

For books it goes the same. Reading stuff that will actually help you and bring you closer to your goals will help a lot more than reading for reading. On the other side you'll be able to go through thousands of page if the subject matters to you, where reading dumb prose will kill your attention in matters of minutes.

Learning to plow through uninteresting books for the sake of it doesn't sound like a worthwhile use of someone's time. But yes, just like workout, some people enjoy the effort in itself and like to feel the pain.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#330

Post by pcchristie » Tue, Jul 25, 2023, 2:12 AM UTC

matthewowen wrote: post #69

Brusco_RF wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning that book. I am trying to decide if it's worth reading. The negative reviews agree with the main premise of the book but say it's short and superficial. Is there information in there worth reading beyond the usual tips ie keeping your phone in another room, avoid news first thing in the morning, no screen time 2 hours before bed, long cardio workouts, etc?

You should look at Matthew Sweet's responses to that book, it's not pretty: https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591249084826... It's also worth noting that Johann Hari has an extensive history as a liar.

I think he got done once or twice for plagiarism, what's the "extensive history as a liar"?