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Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

amirsharif.com

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Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#101

Post by cgriswald »

YuukiRey wrote: post #90
mortsnort wrote: post #61

Tik Tok is obvious brain rot, but what if one's time at the dopamine carnival is spent consuming "brain-growth" content? Phones essentially put all human knowledge at our fingertips, where is the line of diminishing or negative returns when trying to consume it?

99% of the time it is consumption without ever utilizing the knowledge for any creative endeavor . And without application the knowledge will quickly fade and you’ll find yourself watching the same 10min video on statistics 101 for the 3rd time, because you keep forgetting. It’s still mindless consumption if you don’t interact with the material in any meaningful way (follow up questions, application, try to refute it…

Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to the type of video. As a writer of fiction, even a 'mindless' video made for entertainment can send my mind reeling through possibilities, relationships, and connections I'd never thought about before, but I think that's just a quibble over wording.

You always lose what you don't use over a long enough time window and in proportion to how much you used it when you did use it. Everything that is true about this 10 minute video is true about a college course. You just retain the college course for longer because (presumably) you've spent more time in class than a 10 minutes video and you've done your homework. But if you don't use it after college, there's a strong chance you've forgotten the details.

Sometimes it's just important to know a thing exists, what it can be used for, and roughly how it is used. Everything else can be learned or refreshed when you need it.

Suppose you've watched that stats 101 video but didn't follow up. You now know:

- The broad strokes of stats 101 even if you don't have perfect recall on the details.

- What it can be used for.

- Whether the particular video is worth watching when and if you do need to use it.

Initial exposure is important. A claim could be made that if nothing is ever done with it, it is a waste; but how does someone without any knowledge know enough to decide whether they should go further with it or not?

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#102

Post by QuantumGood »

rglover wrote: post #100

My wife and I have been talking about noticing the general cognitive decline in people we interact with. We both started to notice that people have been getting a little bit...goofy (spacing out, not really reciprocating communication, hyper-limited attention spans, etc). We both land on a combination of social media and economic effects (people stressed to make ends meet leading to an anxious mind). AI is on the low…

You say "people", any filters? Young/old, working/not working. I notice changes in each new generation that are at least cognitive adjacent.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#104

Post by lubujackson »

unclad5968 wrote: post #14
fnord77 wrote: post #4

> Developers actually take up to 19% longer when coding with AI than without it, but self-report that they were able to complete tasks 20% faster. this contradicts thought leaders in the field like Andrew Ng

What is a thought leader?

PR speak for marketer

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#105

Post by jay_kyburz »

QuantumGood wrote: post #102
rglover wrote: post #100

My wife and I have been talking about noticing the general cognitive decline in people we interact with. We both started to notice that people have been getting a little bit...goofy (spacing out, not really reciprocating communication, hyper-limited attention spans, etc). We both land on a combination of social media and economic effects (people stressed to make ends meet leading to an anxious mind). AI is on the low…

You say "people", any filters? Young/old, working/not working. I notice changes in each new generation that are at least cognitive adjacent.

My partner was telling me about the Gen Z stare last night. Apparently when you try and talk to them in the workplace they don't know how to respond so they will just stare back at you.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#106

Post by jay_kyburz »

bigiain wrote: post #53
Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would your employer say if you said “I don’t own a smartphone. What alternatives exist?” My current employer has a little nub on my laptop that I touch, but my previous employer was big on making me check my smartphone.

I have at times carried a Firefox Phone and a Pinephone, and deeply enjoyed asking work or other people who insisted I needed to download an app to do (whatever) "Where I can get your app for my phone? No, it's not an iPhone. No, it's not an Android phone either." (Lately I've been using "It's a work phone, I'm not able to install apps on it, you'll need to run your app past our corporate IT and Security team.")

If your work requires you to have a phone, they should provide it to you. Call it your authentication brick.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#107

Post by michael1999 »

jampa wrote: post #11

> Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. That is my biggest problem with most Multifactor authentication. I try to leave my phone in another room to focus, but needing the phone authenticator for something always happens within two hours. I still don't know why apps think a device I carry in the streets is safer than one…

Apple keychain lets you store TOTP secrets, and Google Auth will let you export the seeds.

That turns the laptop + fingerprint into your extra factors.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#108

Post by devmor »

> I don’t rely on “willpower” or “discipline” - I try to design each day with intention

This point is the most important callout to me. This is a macrocosm of how I focus on tasks as a person with already disastrous dopamine interactions (severe ADHD).

I was actually thinking about this last night, when I noticed that I approached the self-checkout at the grocery store with more items than the two people who'd been there before me, and left before either of them had finished checking out despite not being in any particular rush.

When I'm going about my day, I am thinking about the actions I'm going to take, deliberating on them and deciding my intent prior to when I will need to execute it. Not to a significant degree, but to go back to my grocery store anecdote: when I was waiting in line I was preparing myself to execute these tasks:

1. Set my re-usable bags in the bagging area.

2. Respond to the prompt asking me if I have placed bags there.

3. Enter my loyalty code.

4. Scan the rigid and heavier items first, placing them in the bottom of the bags.

5. Scan the lighter, crushable items last.

6. Select my payment method.

7. Tap my payment card, and respond to the PIN prompts.

8. Retrieve my bags and receipt.

This sounds like a lot, looking at it. Maybe it was early on, but now this is such a natural part of my cognitive load that I didn't even specifically notice that I do it until I wondered about the speed difference I observed.

To further reinforce the hypothesis, I thought about the most recent times that I did something completely unstructured with no idea what I would have to do (or at least no solid plan due to the event being controlled by other people) and concluded that I was generally slower to act and felt less able to respond to stimuli appropriately.

This is all to say, given these observations and the initial recognition of what I use as an ADHD-coping strategy, I wonder if the overuse of social media and similar stimuli effectively reproduces the negative aspects of ADHD on otherwise "normal"-brained individuals.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#109

Post by Traubenfuchs »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #105
QuantumGood wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "people", any filters? Young/old, working/not working. I notice changes in each new generation that are at least cognitive adjacent.

My partner was telling me about the Gen Z stare last night. Apparently when you try and talk to them in the workplace they don't know how to respond so they will just stare back at you.

And you know what your partner telling you about the gen-z stare story means?

They are a social media trend addict, just like anyone else. Because the gen-z stare is a new meme that bubbled up to the top of social media infinite scrool content in the last week.

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