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We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

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Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#181

Post by bccdee »

mallowdram wrote: post #180
bccdee wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first study says smartphone use is associated with conduct problems and hyperactivity in 6-year-olds; no teens or stupidity in sight. Other studies discuss distraction, cyberbullying, bad diet/poor exercise, toddlers' sensory processing abilities, anxiety, and lost sleep. None of this covers stupidity, and much of it is not about teens. The most interesting study you cited finds structural brain differences in p…

The loss of attention, the erosion of reading and math skills as of 2025 are quantified, not anecdotal. You keep ignoring: the basic science of creativity, imagination, learning all stem from free navigation and vicarious, trail and error path integration. It is deductive that devices that impair this impair learning. Learning is based on free exploration of space. Mammalian intelligence is way-finding that stitches…

Education has been under the axe for years. Declining test scores are more likely to be the product of No Child Left Behind than the iPhone.

> You keep ignoring: the basic science of creativity

"Basic science" is something of an oxymoron here. Measuring creativity is anything but basic. You're appealing to intuition—an intuition I share to some extent, but not one that we can call scientific

> The idea you can't see a relationship between three year-old impairment and teen loss of learning

I can see how there might be a relationship. There also might not be: Some kids are late bloomers, and the children in this study hadn't even gone to preschool yet.

Where's the meta-analysis finding a causal link between smartphone use and impaired cognition in teens? If you want to talk about science, you can't extrapolate things like this based on how you figure they're probably working. Science is empirical.

> Your statements are only narrative and narrow, you pretend to grasp ideas and information

You're getting awfully aggressive¹ about this. Have you considered putting your phone down?

[1]: https://www.mdpi.com/2254-9625/15/6/98

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#182

Post by mallowdram »

bccdee wrote: post #181
mallowdram wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of attention, the erosion of reading and math skills as of 2025 are quantified, not anecdotal. You keep ignoring: the basic science of creativity, imagination, learning all stem from free navigation and vicarious, trail and error path integration. It is deductive that devices that impair this impair learning. Learning is based on free exploration of space. Mammalian intelligence is way-finding that stitches…

Education has been under the axe for years. Declining test scores are more likely to be the product of No Child Left Behind than the iPhone. > You keep ignoring: the basic science of creativity "Basic science" is something of an oxymoron here. Measuring creativity is anything but basic. You're appealing to intuition—an intuition I share to some extent, but not one that we can call scientific > The idea you can't see…

Science isn't simply empirical. There are five other stages to theoretic knowledge and your reasoning suggests you don't know how to discuss ideas scientifically. You exclude statements to make claims. I said, attention erosion AND test score decline. You chose to make a narrative claim using No Child Left Behind, and picking one of the conditions. Yes there is a basic science of creativity (there is also a complex), we have indexes of creative erosion in the mid-20s.

When you can revisit these ideas with a scientific manner, then I can respond. Until then you are just spinning narratives.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#183

Post by procaryote »

OmarShehata wrote: post #158
procaryote wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very hard to know without being in an FMRI machine while reading, which I wasn't, sadly. Just functionally, it seems reasonable that something happened before that bad feeling to trigger it, e.g. "trying to fit this with already known things, and finding it doesn't".

this isn't a "it depends on what computation happens in this specific case" question, this is a "how does human cognition work". Every website you visit has the payload delivered over the network before any JS is parsed. It has to, there's no other way. Same with intuition followed by rational thought

I'm not sure human cognition is that clear cut or linear.

I guess if you define all rapid cognition as Intuition and all slower conscious cognition as Rational Thought, you're right by definition, but while that might provide a happy feeling, it might not give you any useful insights upon deeper inspection.

For instance, it doesn't support or disprove the "less emotion is bad for thought" idea

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#184

Post by procaryote »

bluGill wrote: post #85
procaryote wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're very knowable, it's just that there's a lot more money in making things up

They are not very knowable. It is expensive to design a study that would work. All too often a real world attempt to figure this out conclude "despite our best efforts we couldn't get people to behave in the needed way". So we have proxy studies that we hope mean something, but might not. Mixed in are lots of people making data fit their conclusion, and then selling it as fact. Few people have the time to figure thin…

There are lots and lots of studies and metastudies etc. We know lots about nutrition and sports performance, and learn more and more

But we produce a lot more made up stuff to generate views and sell products

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#185

Post by bccdee »

mallowdram wrote: post #182
bccdee wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education has been under the axe for years. Declining test scores are more likely to be the product of No Child Left Behind than the iPhone. > You keep ignoring: the basic science of creativity "Basic science" is something of an oxymoron here. Measuring creativity is anything but basic. You're appealing to intuition—an intuition I share to some extent, but not one that we can call scientific > The idea you can't see…

Science isn't simply empirical. There are five other stages to theoretic knowledge and your reasoning suggests you don't know how to discuss ideas scientifically. You exclude statements to make claims. I said, attention erosion AND test score decline. You chose to make a narrative claim using No Child Left Behind, and picking one of the conditions. Yes there is a basic science of creativity (there is also a complex),…

> When you can revisit these ideas with a scientific manner, then I can respond.

Ironic that you would level a criticism like this while touting "non-empirical science," whatever that is.

> You chose to make a narrative claim using No Child Left Behind

Do me the courtesy of paraphrasing my claims accurately. I said the drop in test scores you're attributing to phones could more plausibly be caused by NCLB, which is a carefully couched statement that doesn't actually draw any concrete conclusions.

I'm gesturing broadly at the absence of conclusive evidence, and you're telling me you don't need conclusive evidence to make definitive statements. I'm hardly the one spinning narratives here.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#186

Post by mallowdram »

bccdee wrote: post #185
mallowdram wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science isn't simply empirical. There are five other stages to theoretic knowledge and your reasoning suggests you don't know how to discuss ideas scientifically. You exclude statements to make claims. I said, attention erosion AND test score decline. You chose to make a narrative claim using No Child Left Behind, and picking one of the conditions. Yes there is a basic science of creativity (there is also a complex),…

> When you can revisit these ideas with a scientific manner, then I can respond. Ironic that you would level a criticism like this while touting "non-empirical science," whatever that is. > You chose to make a narrative claim using No Child Left Behind Do me the courtesy of paraphrasing my claims accurately. I said the drop in test scores you're attributing to phones could more plausibly be caused by NCLB, which is a…

There are few conclusions in science, you should know that, there's merely a next theoretic stage. We don't know the origins of the AIDS virus or SARS-CoV-2. It took 30 years to prove cigarettes definitively caused cancer after the first Doll & Hill 1956 study, but we could see the connections. Same here, we can see the connections beginning in 2017, and now we have over 200 studies that suggest and prove in parts and piecemeal like the Doll & Hill study that phones are bad for kids.

Gesturing broadly at a lack of conclusive evidence is simply naysaying the connections that educators, child development experts, neuroscience researchers are detailing. If you can't counter their connections and simply sit on the ledge of denial, you ain't thinking, you're in denial.

Stay in storytelling.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#187

Post by dghlsakjg »

procaryote wrote: post #184
bluGill wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not very knowable. It is expensive to design a study that would work. All too often a real world attempt to figure this out conclude "despite our best efforts we couldn't get people to behave in the needed way". So we have proxy studies that we hope mean something, but might not. Mixed in are lots of people making data fit their conclusion, and then selling it as fact. Few people have the time to figure thin…

There are lots and lots of studies and metastudies etc. We know lots about nutrition and sports performance, and learn more and more But we produce a lot more made up stuff to generate views and sell products

You are also making the assumption that studies and metastudies are not trying to sell you something or that the authors aren't trying to prove something that the science doesn't support.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#188

Post by procaryote »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #187
procaryote wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots and lots of studies and metastudies etc. We know lots about nutrition and sports performance, and learn more and more But we produce a lot more made up stuff to generate views and sell products

You are also making the assumption that studies and metastudies are not trying to sell you something or that the authors aren't trying to prove something that the science doesn't support.

I don't think every study is completely corrupt. I wouldn't call it an assumption as much as an assessment that a lot of studies seem to agree with reality pretty well.

Pragmatically I suspect this might be because most of the market don't actually read these things, and are just as happy with made up bs.

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