Popular science videos is still filler; I'd be inclined agree if you were scrolling MIT lectures (and watching them in their entirety), but how much of actual knowledge (and not random tidbits) do you retain from short form videos?
Where is popular science videos coming from? Blogs, Wikipedia, research papers, Substacks, newspapers, magazines, ChatGPT, etc.
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a short form video in conveying information but what information in this context can be compressed down to fit?
How much can you really learn from even a 30 second Feynman lecture?
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.
> My current employer has a little nub on my laptop that I touch This is for authentication ?
It’s called a yubikey. The slim version barely protrudes from the usb port.
> 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 It has not been peer-reviewed.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…
I am sure studies would find I use my hamstrings and quadriceps less when driving than when walking too.
The problem is if you are driving a car to go the same speed and distance as walking then it is missing the point.
> 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 It has not been peer-reviewed.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…
I agree that it's not a great study, but I also don't want to find out too late that it wasn't a good idea to outsource my thinking to ChatGPT.
The idea of app timers seems like exactly the weird self-negotiation alcoholics do around booze where they think mimicking the habits of casual drinkers (on what is, to the casual, a bender) will make them not an alcoholic anymore. Yes, normies might have three margaritas on a Tuesday. Like, once a quarter. Not every single day, and also not followed by a whole lot more once you’re loosened up. Likewise, the reaction…
I wish Chrome had timers for specific websites on mobile. I hate the all-or-nothing Chrome timer, it's ridiculous and so counter intuitive.
this is the sole reason i default to Firefox on mobile as it allows extensions. And install a website restriction ext like Leechblock [1].
It's really hard to take any of his claims seriously when the article title itself is leading with 1960s old wives tales about dopamine neurochemistry.
The study wasn't great but don't outsource your thinking. The study (if we assume it was good) told students the objective of their task was to generate a factual essay about topic X. The study then measured how much they learned about the topic at the end, but the students who used ChatGPT "learned" less and remembered their own essay less despite an equally passable essay. I want the alternative version of the stud…
Speaking about not outsourcing practice reminds me of the physical analogue... I have heard about people talk about "farmer's strength" to reference a very natural functional strength that is earned by the gruelling and diverse physical demands of doing farm labour for a lifetime. Now people have invented various training regimes to try to reproduce that kind of strength outside of the original farming environment. E…
It's kind of the opposite of strength training regimens, it's more like people saying "Why would I pick up the weight by hand when forklifts exist? When, in the real world, when doing a job, am I going to be expected to pick up dumbbells by hand lol? I'll just use a forklift every time."
The idea of app timers seems like exactly the weird self-negotiation alcoholics do around booze where they think mimicking the habits of casual drinkers (on what is, to the casual, a bender) will make them not an alcoholic anymore. Yes, normies might have three margaritas on a Tuesday. Like, once a quarter. Not every single day, and also not followed by a whole lot more once you’re loosened up. Likewise, the reaction…
I get what you are saying but it’s 2025 and a mobile device is basically required to operate in society today. Especially if you want an active social life or to excel at work. Nobody needs a margarita or any other addictive substance to function in society (barring actual substances issues). So it’s a false equivalence to compare apps like this. An example in my middle aged life is that my kids extra-curriculars are…
I do agree with your point about phones being necessary and that complicating the addiction but A) people absolutely made the same argument about alcohol in the past, that it was necessary for a social life and B) they were critical of the TikTok app specifically rather than phones as a whole in general.
> 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…
So what, ChatGPT is the new weed? One critical statement draws out all the addicts in defense?
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 lower-end of our concerns.