Have attention spans been declining? • Hacker News Board

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#491

Post by xnx » Wed, Jul 26, 2023, 11:43 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #33

There is far more content than there used to be but no more hours in the day. Our filters must reject more. Yes, there are costs -- deep work & study both suffer -- but there are benefits too: informational content that can be compressed does get compressed. An introduction to a concrete skill that would at one time have been padded out to fit into an hour long movie or lecture might become a 30 minute youtube video…

Yes! The Tiktok format has been fantastic for getting creators to consider what the core of their messages is and edit out everything else. A well-made Tiktok video watched 5x is more valuable than a 10 minute YouTube video where the camera is left running and filler added just to pad out the monetization minimum time.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#492

Post by Zetice » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #482

Zetice wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you said “no”, and I only said one thing. Do you take that back?

I was disagreeing with it being about experts "praising" each other.

No you weren't, you were choosing to focus on a different category to which these people belonged in an ultimately non sequitur comment.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#493

Post by Zetice » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 1:18 AM UTC

CatWChainsaw wrote: post #488

Zetice wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you said “no”, and I only said one thing. Do you take that back?

That's so embarrassingly obtuse I refuse to believe you aren't aware and are just being contrarian.

Not obtuse at all, just catching rhetorical trickery.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#494

Post by axiomaticdoubts » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 4:19 AM UTC

Zetice wrote: post #435

axiomaticdoubts wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just bloggers. There are computer scientists with publications in top CS conferences that post on LW. For example, Alexander Turner, Dan Hendrycks, Paul Christiano, and Jacob Steinhardt all post there.

Then the question you should be asking is why choose to post on LW when the value of publishing a paper is substantially higher. Perhaps because what they post doesn’t hold up to scrutiny from their peers, so they prefer to play in the mud with the folks who won’t notice the issues with their ideas.

People publish blog posts for several reasons. Many see it as a fun, social activity.

Re: Have attention spans been declining?

#495

Post by dysoco » Thu, Jul 27, 2023, 3:09 PM UTC

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #17

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that has to do with excessively long movies and nothing to do with reduced attention spans. Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min.

> Very, very few action movies need to be more than 100min. I’ve read somewhere that blockbuster movies are trending longer at the moment, because people are ever less willing to pay the high prices for cinema tickets, drinks and snacks, so movie studios need to offer a really big experience to make it seem worthwhile.

I mean not that many films that I really want to watch come out per year, so if Oppenheimer is 3hs instead of 2hs or whatever then let it be; I'd rather spend one more hour at the theater and watch the movie knowing the director didn't need to cut an hour off the film.

(Although I do have to say Oppenheimer got somewhat tedious in certain parts)