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Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

amirsharif.com

111–120 of 143 posts

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#111

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…

I am a party magician in my spare time -- I walk around parties and show short bits of eye-catching magic to guests.

I have noticed that some young people (~18-30 yo) lose attention within as little as 5 seconds. I could have someone choose a card and in that amount of time, they have spaced out -- no phone, just staring blankly. I have two rubber bands examined and by the time they are handed back, someone is on their phone.

The most annoying part is that -- because I construct my routines for minimal attention spans -- within 2 more seconds, something magic happens and everyone who's paying attention reacts. And the 1-2 young people who zoned out start panicking about the FOMO, "what happened?" "do it again!" Sorry folks!

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#112
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…

Pretty much every password managers can store MFA (Bitwarden, 1password). You only need smartphone to log in to the password manager only once a day.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#113

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…

I am a party magician in my spare time -- I walk around parties and show short bits of eye-catching magic to guests. I have noticed that some young people (~18-30 yo) lose attention within as little as 5 seconds. I could have someone choose a card and in that amount of time, they have spaced out -- no phone, just staring blankly. I have two rubber bands examined and by the time they are handed back, someone is on the…

google "gen z stare". This is such a commonly observed thing that it got a name, meme, tiktok sound, and news articles.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ('Wrongquote':) Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to any video.

heck...damn... that was a lot of fun in the Job's area, steve Jobs official presented his 1st Ipad showing an interactive Book for children but also adults, and for sure there was something to learn.

> But... Does it also let you unset any limits?

Nah they never released any well known interactive books as far as i know, so i didn't bought that ipad. But was interested in the 'screen-only'-technology since 2003 (bought my first tablet PC around 2005)...

A few days ago, there was a topic about the book 'neuromancer' could you even imagine such a book as interactive (not a game) ?

It may took years and a hell of a crowd to finish something like that satisfying enough to get only a niche of people.

HINT: The Message of the Book (the Punk-Part) was about: 'Everybody needs money (Products) so you have to get a job.'

Quoting more "nonsens" but remarkable;

It's quite possible to live with websites. Nothing else.

Clue: Apps let you set a limit on withdrawals when you are away from home.

(edited: found some typos^^) You enjoyed the ads, but do you enjoy the products designed to optimize Clickrates and funnel conversions?

And if it was too OT, think just a random person typing something...never mind...

ᬛ btw: google didn't show, what does that mean - it has more speculated 'space' one screen than the regular charsetting, tinyer chars i had known and seen before...but... ??

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#115

> Using ChatGPT on cognitive tasks can reduce your brain connectivity by up to 50% and reduce your ability to recall information about the task by 8x. Argh people keep referencing this study as Gospel. It has not been peer-reviewed. Its methodology has a number of concerning confounders. It's a tiny sample with a narrow contrived task domain. And the very premise of the study is misframed. The implication that 'brain…

[dead]

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a party magician in my spare time -- I walk around parties and show short bits of eye-catching magic to guests. I have noticed that some young people (~18-30 yo) lose attention within as little as 5 seconds. I could have someone choose a card and in that amount of time, they have spaced out -- no phone, just staring blankly. I have two rubber bands examined and by the time they are handed back, someone is on the…

google "gen z stare". This is such a commonly observed thing that it got a name, meme, tiktok sound, and news articles.

For what it's worth, the nature of the stare seems to be in dispute:

> With this, a lot of Gen Z “clapped back,” if you will (this essentially means they rebutted), saying that this stare comes from listening to Boomers or Millennials ask them obvious questions or start demanding things from them that warrant a look that says, “Are you actually serious right now?” or “I don’t get paid enough for this.”

https://www.insidehook.com/internet/gen-z-stare (first result after searching "gen z stare" on DDG)

Not saying some people don't get bored and start looking at their phones way too fast (uh, like drivers at a stop light? that's not limited to gen z), just that there might be another reason for any given blank stare.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#117
post #108

> 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 t…

Is this an ADHD coping strategy? I’m not trying to second guess, I’m actually very intrigued because the way you described your thought process is very similar to mine, but I’ve never been tested or diagnosed.

In any case thanks, this will help me in the future I think.

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#118
post #46
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…

> I still don't know why apps think a device I carry in the streets is safer [...] Because MFA requirements have never been about security, only security theater. It's the modern version of the "you must change your password every 30 days" rule.

On the contrary, single-factor authentication is generally fine (MFA is still better, of course) if the single-factor is an authenticator application or, better yet, a U2F hardware key. If anything in modern web security is theater, it is the password (and SMS MFA but that's because SMS is a joke to takeover).

Re: Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And here I am bubbling it up to the nerdiest social media of all! :)
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