Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have attention spans been declining?

slimemoldtimemold.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 495 posts

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#341

Post by axiomaticdoubts »

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]

It's not just bloggers. There are computer scientists with publications in top CS conferences that post on LW. For example, Alexander Turner, Dan Hendrycks, Paul Christiano, and Jacob Steinhardt all post there.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#343

Post by mikewarot »

My attention span has grown. I've watched multiple hour interviews by a number of people on a variety of topics I've found interesting.

My tolerance for narrative disguised as news has vanished. I stopped watching TV and mainstream news. I deliberately follow some people I strongly disagree with, to keep from falling into an echo chamber.

Curate your sources, and it's a wonderful world. If you let the algorithm decide what you see, it controls you, eventually.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#345

Post by blobbers »

I'm curious what the shape of the distribution actually is in terms of attention span, and if there is skew.

I used to spend hours and hours pouring over math problem sets. There isn't a 'tiktok'ed way to be good at solving linear signal problems by hand, as far as I can tell. It is simply a matter of focusing and practicing, being able to recognize patterns and take the appropriate steps. I'm not saying it was a useful skill to learn, but it was a difficult one to pick up, at least for me.

While I do feel that my attention is often "pulled" by multiple things, when I am truly able to focus is when I have sole responsibility, rather than many conflicting things. In that sense, my attention is often drawn by multiple things.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#346

Post by johnnyworker »

cwkoss wrote: post #170
deathanatos wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see recipes Tiktoks get readily debunked in longer-form content, such as by channels like "How To Cook That"¹; the Tiktoks amount to little more than content farming. What real information might be present is drowned out by fakes and bad advice that exist for no other reason than to soak up eyeballs. I get far more out of longer-form videos, IMO. (And yes, the bloated recipe blogspam is also a form that is rapidly…

Huh, the two recipes I tried came out great. Any examples of fake tiktok recipes? All the top "How To Cook That" debunking videos seem to be about other youtube videos or just weird food videos that aren't recipes.

I wouldn't call them fake recipes, but here is a youtube channel that is highlighting Tik Tok cooking videos, some of which seem to be just for the video... that is, I don't believe even the people showing those "recipes" are eating that.

https://www.youtube.com/@tanaradoublechocolate/videos

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#347

Post by rjzzleep »

mlyle wrote: post #139
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…

The flip side is that when people get used to consuming content in 30 second blipverts, they become unable to maintain attention through a 10 second break in the action. I don't know for sure about causation, but the students that I see incessantly consume tiktok completely lose state and working context in a very short time. It's a very strong correlation. (And, I disagree a bit with your premise: for those of us wh…

TL;DR if we keep the direct environment of our child clean and limit distractions she's calm, and focused. If we don't she gets whiny and somewhat unbearable.

I'm raising a child right now and it's pretty simple to observe a few simple patterns:

1. if there is stuff in her visible range during any activity that is even mildly interesting she wants it and it distracts from any activity. be it her own scooter, or her own toys lying around. denying her access to it makes her upset.

2. if there is any food in her visible range, cookies, fruits, anything, while eating dinner, she wants it and it makes feeding harder. denying access to it will make her upset and scream.

3. if there is a screen of any sort or a bright light on she will stare at it. denying her access to it makes her upset unless I turn it off and put my devices away.

4. We don't have a TV so she enjoys books a lot and we have improved our eating habits which makes it A LOT easier to feed her the same her healthy food.

5. Grand parents think they should bring a bunch of gifts every time they visit meaning our place is filled with junk, infinite amounts of clothes and they get upset when they don't get to gift it much like the kids that receive them.

What I'm trying to say it that even taking away all the digital distractions, a lot of these simple things are things I and many people around me did not have in abundance as a child.

It's not just because the digital stuff that attention spans decline. It's because EVERYTHING is noisy. Even the children books and toys are flashy and noisy.

It's not like you wake up one day and have attention or not, it's something that is learned over long periods of time.

How is any one supposed to grow up learning focus with all that junk around? I think a lot of these things are designed to get attention from children. The toy, book, and even children clothing manufacturers compete with each other on attention, ultimately I would argue with the goal of making the biggest profits.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#348

Post by sersi »

pwpw wrote: post #313
BirdieNZ wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage > I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without; there are tasks which are less difficult for the person with ADHD than other tasks, but ADHD doesn't bestow many, if any, advantages over a neurotypical person. Your experience is totally valid! I can only speak for my own experience, but I find compared to my…

I was going to write the same thing you did. I've been diagnosed with ADHD and while it is a disadvantage for certain things (I've lost quite a bit of money due to invoices not being sent on time to clients as a contractor, fines for not submitting tax on time, etc...), it's also been hugely beneficial in other areas.

When I was in university, I quickly realized that I had a hard time paying attention to lectures but that I would be passionate about reading the reference books on the various subjects. So I skipped a lot of classes (it was a French engineering school, attendance is not mandatory if your grades are good) and I read all the relevant textbooks. I was studying CS so I was passionate and very interested in what I was reading so I could easily hyperfocus on those books and did very well. On the other hand, if I had been forced to attend lectures instead, I would have not done nearly as well.

In my work life, I've been the go to person who solves the hard problems because when I find an interesting problem to work on, I can completely focus on it until I solve it. On the other hand, I have a very hard time dealing with boring repetitive tasks but that's why an effective manager makes sure each people play to their strength.

So I do take issue with this statement "As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I think this misrepresents ADHD. There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage; " and "ADHD is a disability, not a difference of ability". On the contrary, ADHD IS a difference of ability and effectively managing ADHD means finding ways to adapt your life and work life to take advantage of the good sides of ADHD and find workarounds around the problematic aspects of it.

I'm honestly not sure if I'd have been as successful without ADHD, I would have lost less money for sure but maybe wouldn't have earned as much as I did. It would have been less stressful though for the first 36 years before I got diagnosed when I didn't understand why I couldn't just do certain tasks.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#349

Post by danybittel »

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…

Are you making your bed everyday?

I think we used to strive more for perfection. Changing sheets, ironing, folding clothes.. But also in trade, just look at all the ornaments.. attention to details, caring for tools / materials. When was the last time you got a suit made?

At some point we compromised and slapped a shiny finish on it. I blame advertising.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#350

Post by barrysteve »

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…

I have tried fixing the brake cable on my bike (and other bike repair tasks), by using the myriad of youtube videos assigned for the task. It's actually quite difficult to hold a brake cable in tension, while forcing an old school front derailleur not meant for the bike into millimeter perfect position and at the same time pause/unpause/rewind a youtube video.

It is honestly easier to put a book down open to the right page, in line of sight. It requires no interaction and book authors are forced to write instructions that can be understood primarily without pictures, so there's no pause/unpause/rewind mentality. Books engage the mental tools to infer what happens next from textual description, an ability videos degrade in the viewer. The implications of that effects decision making subtly.

Books are also a welcome release from the trance-like state induced in consumers by most electronic displays.

I agree most books are garbage (like most of everything), the filtering of low quality books has failed. In my limited understanding most of the great literature was written between the 1700s and 1900s anyway. Recent literature does not grant the broad understanding and height over the subject matter.

It is somewhat problematic to rely on multiple youtube videos and find they all have 'small detail' gaps in their perfomances that exist because the video format is to train the user along a generic path of action. Those cracks often reveal a chasm of difference in understanding and in the end, the video is replacing turn-key parts and I'm angle grinding off a stuck cup and cone bearing, even though on the surface the problems look identical.

Post reply on HN