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Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

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Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#21

Post by copperx »

smokel wrote: post #19

Interesting mix of pointers in this article. What I was looking for, but could not find in the article, is some more information about time perception [1]. It amazes me to no end that time seems to be passing faster and faster now that I grow older. In my youth, 10 minutes used to take ages, but now a month passes in a blink. If any of you startup guys can find a way to slow this down, I'll buy a subscription. [1] ht…

One theory I like is that when young, we see the world in "high FPS" (a rough metaphor for some neurological phenomenon). As we age, the "FPS" slow down, which makes everything seem much faster.

At least in my subjective experience, I can tell that motion seems coarser now that I'm 40. I can still detect the "soap opera" effect when motion smoothing is turned on in a TV, but it's a bit harder to tell than when the feature was introduced.

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#22

Post by yamrzou »

smokel wrote: post #19

Interesting mix of pointers in this article. What I was looking for, but could not find in the article, is some more information about time perception [1]. It amazes me to no end that time seems to be passing faster and faster now that I grow older. In my youth, 10 minutes used to take ages, but now a month passes in a blink. If any of you startup guys can find a way to slow this down, I'll buy a subscription. [1] ht…

The way I think about it is by making an analogy with sleep: We perceive time to be fastest during sleep, i.e. when there is no sensory input. So the perception of time is actually linked to changes in sensory inputs. My hypothesis is that as we grow older, we become less and less sensitive to stimuli due to familiarity, so we perceive time to be faster.

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#23

Post by yamrzou »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #3

Sloths are living proof of this.

You are joking, but you are right:

From Why Are Sloths So Slow? (https://slothconservation.org/sloths-move-slow/):

> The answer is surprisingly simple: Being slow is an incredibly successful strategy for survival. In fact, being slow has helped sloths to survive on this planet for almost 64 million years.

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#24

Post by smokel »

yamrzou wrote: post #20
smokel wrote: post #19

Interesting mix of pointers in this article. What I was looking for, but could not find in the article, is some more information about time perception [1]. It amazes me to no end that time seems to be passing faster and faster now that I grow older. In my youth, 10 minutes used to take ages, but now a month passes in a blink. If any of you startup guys can find a way to slow this down, I'll buy a subscription. [1] ht…

You might find this interesting: Time Perception: Why Time Can Feel So Slow — https://www.spring.org.uk/2022/12/time-perception.php

I do indeed, thank you.

Unfortunately, the question what causes time perception to speed up with age, remains a mystery to me. I don't buy the argument that when we grow older things are less new, and therefore time somehow appears to go faster. For one, I learn more now than I did in my teens, when there was no internet. I also get to meet more people, experience life events, learn about death, etc. All pretty new, yet time seems to only accelerate.

The article also taught me a new term: "Boredom-prone individual". I think it might be an interesting experiment to try to be as bored as possible over the course of a year, and try to become a BPI. Perhaps the lasting effects will make up for the investment!

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#25

Post by pazimzadeh »

The literature on intelligence is kind of all over the place

Higher intelligence is thought to be linked with more efficient use of resources rather than just faster or slower thinking:

Diffusion markers of dendritic density and arborization in gray matter predict differences in intelligence https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04268-8

But, larger and faster neurons are found in people with higher IQ?:

Large and fast human pyramidal neurons associate with intelligence https://elifesciences.org/articles/41714

More intelligent people have better neurological integrity and their neural impulses travel faster:

Genetics of Brain Fiber Architecture and Intellectual Performance

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/7/2212

But, intelligent people take longer to solve difficult problems:

Learning how network structure shapes decision-making for bio-inspired computing https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38626-y

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#26

Post by bob1029 »

michaelteter wrote: post #15

At the highest level, it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters. So being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice. But since we create our own isolated realities, most of which are human-lifetime based, we tend to care about the passage of hours or days. And in that scope, sometimes being quick seems important, but also having perspective and time for reflection can. The…

If we are looking at this from a business perspective (which might map), the actual wizardry is in knowing exactly when to push and when to sleep on something.

I think we can all agree that there are things you should think very deeply about before you even touch your computer or join the conference call. Things like what sorts of vendors and business partners you want to get married to for the next half-decade. If you want to be a Microsoft shop or some OSS champion (both valid in my view!). These kinds of things often times require starting a new company to fix after you commit.

In our domain - the thing you don't want to spend a lot of time worrying about is the entire scope of the actual code/development work. Assuming you are using source control, you have a superpower that allows instant teleportation to any moment in time. The consequences of making a bad choice and acting quickly are negligible, assuming you aren't trying to lose the game on purpose (e.g. master builds straight to prod on unprotected pushes). It only gets to be adverse if you are unable to separate the bad from good ideas afterwards. Not reflecting on your prior works. I believe we'd refer to this as the "technical debt".

I think it was Amazon that does the one-way/two-way door decision test. This is a fair criteria for deciding when to sleep on a proposal or when to shoot and then aim.

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#27

Post by pazimzadeh »

michaelteter wrote: post #15

At the highest level, it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters. So being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice. But since we create our own isolated realities, most of which are human-lifetime based, we tend to care about the passage of hours or days. And in that scope, sometimes being quick seems important, but also having perspective and time for reflection can. The…

> it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters

> being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice

Only during times of abundance (very recently). Historically, survival would be thing that mattered, and time is very important for running away from things, finding antidotes to poisons/disease, social coordination etc..

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#28

Post by smokel »

copperx wrote: post #21
smokel wrote: post #19

Interesting mix of pointers in this article. What I was looking for, but could not find in the article, is some more information about time perception [1]. It amazes me to no end that time seems to be passing faster and faster now that I grow older. In my youth, 10 minutes used to take ages, but now a month passes in a blink. If any of you startup guys can find a way to slow this down, I'll buy a subscription. [1] ht…

One theory I like is that when young, we see the world in "high FPS" (a rough metaphor for some neurological phenomenon). As we age, the "FPS" slow down, which makes everything seem much faster. At least in my subjective experience, I can tell that motion seems coarser now that I'm 40. I can still detect the "soap opera" effect when motion smoothing is turned on in a TV, but it's a bit harder to tell than when the fe…

Interesting. I (also in my 40s) sometimes experience the vividness of reality in a higher quality than usual, and I vaguely recall that my visual experience was always this vivid when I was younger. Most of the time now it seems to be a bit dulled down. I always thought that this is because I probably need glasses. It might also be stress related.

What would cause such a change, and would there be an evolutionary explanation for it? Could it be related to vision only, or does it apply to other sensory input as well?

Re: Speed isn’t everything, and slowness may in fact be more beneficial (2017)

#30

Post by polynomial »

michaelteter wrote: post #15

At the highest level, it's difficult to argue that anything actually matters. So being in a hurry is as pointless as pondering endlessly to make the best choice. But since we create our own isolated realities, most of which are human-lifetime based, we tend to care about the passage of hours or days. And in that scope, sometimes being quick seems important, but also having perspective and time for reflection can. The…

> There is a time for blitz chess, and there's a time for clockless chess.

Arguably, there is more time for blitz chess.

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