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The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

journals.uchicago.edu

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Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#331

Post by aquamo »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #179
notadoc wrote: post #56

I've come to hate notifications, alerts, and digital nags of all kinds. I disable practically all of them on every device I own, the only unsolicited notifications I want are from rare legitimate emergencies. But yea, simply having a smartphone around makes you want to fiddle with it. I would guess there is some addictive component there, as it impacts nearly everyone.

Windows 10 that came on my laptop kept displaying a notification every day in the bottom right of the screen, notifying me that the security scan found no issues. It seems like that's a regression in design. Only notify me if something goes wrong, don't notify me if things are as they are supposed to be. Now I've set the "Quiet Hours" setting to permanently on so no notifications are permitted.

I observe the Internet as an unfriendly place to study and take in information. Ads that move, shake, and make noise do so to tug at that primary fear of a predator or by exploiting the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventral_tegmental_area, amongst other methods. Psychologists have worked with advertising platforms like Facebook, Google, etc. to min-max and game-ify breaking our attention as much as they can. Its like they moved a really bad band and some actors into every one of our libraries and marked up all the pages with ads. The mobile platform extends the reach of these platforms. Maybe we need the computers to put us on a diet automatically; rate limiting or setting a maximum daily dose after which all ads and notifications are turned off or extremely limited. Seems like just a simple matter of programming :-)

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#333

Post by Matumio »

bigbugbag wrote: post #60
djsumdog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you won't know the number. You'd need to go to as library first, log into whatever service you keep your contacts on (I run my own radicalie carddav, but most people use Google or Apple's services) and find their number. I use to have most of my friend's phone numbers memorized by the shape they made on the keypad. Today we stay in contact with a lot more people, or at least I do, and it helps to no need to memor…

> it helps to no need to memorize numbers. actually it does not. if you had to memorize numbers you would have better memory and would have little to no issue remembering them.

You would be better at memorizing numbers but worse at something else. Maybe you'd remember fewer contacts. Also, we have become worse at adding big numbers in our head, but we actually make fewer mistakes and are faster with big numbers since we have started using tools for that.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#334

Post by ameister14 »

bobbybobbybob wrote: post #274
oddgoo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their world did end for those 80 million people. If most of society dies in pain and hunger to climate change, would the survivors say "bah, just more fear mongering"? For me, humanity is the sum of human experiences, not the mere presence of the species. The end of the world being relative and analog.

9 million already due of hunger every year, what is the world doing about that presently?

A lot. Billions of dollars are spent to combat it and research on food and agriculture to solve hunger has been going for years.

>The vast majority of hungry people live in developing regions, which saw a 42 percent reduction in the prevalence of undernourished people between 1990–92 and 2012–14.

http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-fac...

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#335

Post by pivotal »

samplatt wrote: post #217
Iv wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in high school when I first read this opinion (I did not remember it was Socrates though). Also, I learned that Gaul, pre-roman France (where I lived), had a society where the priests/judges, the druids, were forbidden to write down their knowledge. It fascinated me. The idea that books, that were more or less revered depositories of knowledge, could have been seen as anti-intellectual at one time. It pushed me…

I feel that you would adore Dan Simmons first two "Hyperion" books. They're predominantly about poetry and how it's affected the human race, far into the future.

The Hyperion books also have some interesting (and prescient) things to say about humans relying on a vast network of information instead of their own memories. They are some of my favorites.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#336

Post by Kluny »

shostack wrote: post #224
thesagan wrote: post #23

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

I'd love to stop using my phone so much, but I can't break the habit. Short of losing it, any tips for dealing with the stress when it flares up from not having the ability to fill those gaps with refreshes of Reddit, news sites or playing games?

Carry a book, or a fidget spinner.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#337

Post by Phemist »

Phemist wrote: post #318

I am quite skeptical of the results of this paper. The claims are very strong, but the paper was published in "Journal of the Association for Consumer Research". I would AT LEAST expect it to be published in a journal related to cognitive sciences (even low-impact cognitive science journals would be fine), this seems like a safety net journal that is not really related to any of that.. Anyway, reading through the pap…

To clarify a bit further as I can no longer edit my post:

The points about the methodology stand, and I don't believe one should update ones beliefs in either way based on this paper.

The "killer" finding is not necessarily a killer towards the reported results (which are dubious anyway), but towards the way the paper is presenting these results. The missing discussion of this interaction effect between phone dependence and phone location is what makes me very much doubt the quality of the paper.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#338

Post by pnathan »

nwatson wrote: post #3

Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…

The bulk of the Old Testament was transmitted orally prior to being written down. It was a time of oral literature.

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Scripture-Literary-Authori...

If one is up for reading a book written by a Christian, this book describes the world well.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

#340

Post by damontal »

shostack wrote: post #224
thesagan wrote: post #23

I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…

I'd love to stop using my phone so much, but I can't break the habit. Short of losing it, any tips for dealing with the stress when it flares up from not having the ability to fill those gaps with refreshes of Reddit, news sites or playing games?

you can set it to black and white (iphone under accessibility). i've heard this makes it less attractive to stare at. you can disable apps under restrictions on iphone - like safari. i've tried all of this and i inevitably just roll these changes back after a while.
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