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> Among the resources that have been plundered by modern technology, the ruins of our attention have commanded a lot of attention. We can’t focus anymore. Getti

> Among the resources that have been plundered by modern technology, the ruins of our attention have commanded a lot of attention. We can’t focus anymore. Getting any “deep work” done requires formidable willpower or a broken modem. Reading has degenerated into skimming and scrolling. The only real way out is to adopt a meditation practice and cultivate a monkish existence. > But in actual historical fact, a life of prayer and seclusion has never meant a life without distraction. I don't think anyone serious claims "distraction" is a new phenomena that didn't exist before "screens." The actual claim is more like the magnitude of distraction is higher now. To give a slightly different example: complaining that your memory is poor because you can only memorize 100 poems is very different than complaining your memory is poor because you can't memorize 10 lines, even though they're both "complaints about memory." Unfortunately, a lot of people engage with these comparisons without looking at the actual details and differences, so they say useless things (often with the effect of denying a problem).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
themitigating 4y ago
Can you quantify or prove that we are more distracted?
- conjectures 4y ago
  An exhortation to consider effect sizes is different to a claim about the effect sizes in a specific situation. It could be that OP is doing both, but you appear to be neglecting the former.
- chaseadam17 4y ago
  There’s quite a bit of data. The early chapters of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari provides a good overview of the research, which shows that people are increasingly switching their attention from one thing to another (both in longitudinal research studies and by analyzing things like how long topics trend in the news). He then goes on to summarize research that shows how “intelligence” drops when people switch focus too quickly. Eg speed reading drops retention, multitasking reduces IQ, etc.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    That just shows the effects but not whether people were more distracted in the past
    - mat_epice 4y ago
      You responded to the second sentence, not the first. "The early chapters of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari provides a good overview of the research, which shows that people are increasingly switching their attention from one thing to another"
      - jjulius 4y ago
        It's okay, they just got distracted! :P
      - AlexErrant 4y ago
        Screenshot of 4 relevant pages from the book: https://i.imgur.com/AwwdEc4.png https://i.imgur.com/AwwdEc4.png The most important part, for me, was this bit: > What they discovered is there is one mechanism that can make this happen every time. You just have to flood the system with more information. The more information you pump in, the less time people can focus on any individual piece of it.
- contravariant 4y ago
  Can't recall many people trying to read a book on a bike. For some reason they seem to think it will work when the book is electronic and small enough.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    > For some reason they seem to think it will work when the book is electronic and small enough. Do you mean a stationary exercise bike? I don't read books on those because I am usually sweating and I don't want to get that on the book. Also, most paperbacks are pretty springy, so sometimes I need to have one hand holding them open, or some kind of clip system on the bike. iPads or Kindles don't have these problems, so I can certainly imagine using them instead. I don't, probably because of an irrational aversion to getting anything from the grungy gym on my personal devices.
    - Swizec 4y ago
      > Do you mean a stationary exercise bike? You may be surprised to learn people do text and bike. I’ve done it on occasion when running late to a meetup with friends. It’s … not very safe.
    - periphrasis 4y ago
      When the weather gets nice in nyc, the bike lanes fill up with people slowly meandering about the lane as they cycle one-handed, eyes glued to their cellphones. My unscientific, purely vibes based take is that the ubiquity of the smartphone has created such widespread severe dopamine addiction that basic human judgment and even self preservation instinct is increasingly impaired.
      - rakejake 4y ago
        Well, once when I was out walking, I saw someone peeing on a trail side, dick in one hand, phone in the other. There is a social crisis of some sort and we basically have no idea how to get out of it.
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I'm sure this question is coming from an earnest place, but does it not stand to reason that the sheer amount of information we have almost ubiquitous access to, combined with personalized content recommendation, means that we are more distracted than a medieval person who had no exposure to such things? How would one even try to assert this empirically?
  - vasco 4y ago
    A medieval person also didn't go through school, likely wasn't taught how to read or forced to work through math problems and do almost 20 years of schooling with the intention of improving their thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention. So it is not obvious at all which effects dominate and if this isn't just the same drivel that Gessner spouted in the 1500's about how books and the printing press were going to create an information overload and ruin our attention - https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-technology-scares-from-the-printing-press-to-facebook.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-tech... - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293
    - themitigating 4y ago
      Wouldn't they have to be more mindful of safety and personal health. Like an increase in dangers from criminals, food, buildings, etc
    - BitwiseFool 4y ago
      Given how popular TikTok and short form content is with the younger generations who are currently in school or just graduated from 20 something years of schooling, I don't think all that intention of improving their "thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention" is that effective at countering contemporary distractions. Have you seen the latest trend where Gen Z'ers zone out by watching a TikTok that has a family guy clip, some arts and crafts clip, and some gameplay footage all on the same screen? It is the epitome of distraction and it's catching on like wildfire because people watching these switch between each subject on screen just enough to hold their attention. The algorithm is rewarding that, so more and more TikToks have composite videos. Going back to the subject of contemporary education, one could also speculate that ~20 years of schooling replacing ~20 years of apprenticeship and mastery of a single craft makes the ability to resist distraction worse. Perhaps teaching someone to make wagon wheels for 20 years makes them better able to focus on a single thing than teaching them to learn all sorts of different subjects for a few hours each day? People like to look back at previous generation's moral panics, but I can't help but think there was an element of truth to many of them.
- coding123 4y ago
  It's obvious
- bongoman37 4y ago
  [dead]
StrictDabbler 4y ago
Previous societies never required that 80% of the working population be scribes. Being a scribe is hard. It was an unusual ability to such an extent that it reinforced the medieval notion of a "vocation" (a calling or duty to do this work). Now we require every worker who wants to rise above the level of retail sales to be capable of spending hours a day going down columns of detailed textual data in Excel or Airtables, or managing a queue of e-mails, or smoothly transitioning between inventory and maintenance. It is less that we are more distracted or distractable now and more that our current tasks are significantly affected by distraction. We're being forced by the labor market to pretend that we aren't chimpanzees.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  > It is less that we are more distracted or distractable now and more that our current tasks are significantly affected by distraction. Clearly both? Processing dry material on a screen, that also offers endlessly seductive doom scrolling opportunities? Sandwiched productivity & entertaining unproductively closer than its ever been! It would be like a scribe trying to copy an endless and far too familiar religious text, while avoiding the pull of the odd pages, which all depict explicit colorful animated scenes of delicious sin.
  - bibanez 4y ago
    That is a great analogy! Technology is this wonderful book, so is it reasonable to expect that we won't read half of it?
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Exactly! It's like the garden of Eden, but every other tree is the kind you're not supposed to eat from. And they have nicer fruit! I think were are characterizing this problem well. Now how do we monetize this? Let people outsource discipline, which we provide, but in a gamified, low customer effort way? I see enterprise potential.
  - birdyrooster 4y ago
cheq 4y ago
In highschool, a teacher told me that 'comparisions are usually bad arguments', and that shit stuck with me for a long time.
- gretch 4y ago
  Um, I mean is it even true? Did they offer any insight on why this is the case? Comparing a new thing to an old familiar thing or a current fact can really help people overcome irrational bias against the fear of the unknown. Metaphors, similes, and analogies are all comparisons and all recognized as powerful forms of rhetoric.
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    "Metaphors, similes, and analogies.." all of which are seductive and cause us to think we know more than we really do.
    - dTal 4y ago
      According to Hosfstader, Lakoff and others, metaphor is the core of cognition, the basic algorithm upon which all else runs. It is deeply embedded in the way we perceive the world, and this is reflected in our language; Lakoff catalogued some of the "metaphors we live by" in his book of the same name, and it is surprising how transparently we use metaphor all the time without even being aware of it. As an intuition pump, consider the following vaguely associated words and their antonyms: up / good / positive / forwards / fast / white / on / daytime / hot / red / aroused / friendly down / bad / negative / backwards / slow / black / off / nighttime / cold / blue / bored / indifferent I'm sure you can add more. You can pick almost any pair of these words and find a phrase that relates them - "I'm feeling blue because Claire called off our date; she's been cold ever since Dave bad-mouthed her."
      - datavirtue 4y ago
        Interesting, that book caused me to question what I really know and hold my views on metaphore. When you see slime mold "learning" and decent AI emerging, it really starts to throw a wet towel on how amazing we think humans are in general because of our intelligence. Then there's election night.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
And, importantly, technology today is expressly designed, with legions of extremely smart PhDs building in instantaneous feedback loops, to keep you as addicted as possible. And these experts' job performance is specifically rated on how good they are at addicting you.
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Therefore, the people who confidently proclaim that this new level of distraction-engineering is the no different from the distractions of a previous era probably have something to gain from from your hijacked attention. Maybe a bonus at work for coding it into an app to such a successful degree.
agumonkey 4y ago
It's a phrase transition or threshold effect. The constant, lag, effort, "cost" free stimulation is indeed different. I have to manage my mood through sports and or fasting to hope my brain can sustain more than 10 min of calm reading. I still have "open tab" reflexes anytime I get next to my laptop and my eyes shift left regularly just as-if there were some google news side bar stream coming.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

themitigating 4y ago

Can you quantify or prove that we are more distracted?

conjectures 4y ago
An exhortation to consider effect sizes is different to a claim about the effect sizes in a specific situation. It could be that OP is doing both, but you appear to be neglecting the former.
chaseadam17 4y ago
There’s quite a bit of data. The early chapters of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari provides a good overview of the research, which shows that people are increasingly switching their attention from one thing to another (both in longitudinal research studies and by analyzing things like how long topics trend in the news). He then goes on to summarize research that shows how “intelligence” drops when people switch focus too quickly. Eg speed reading drops retention, multitasking reduces IQ, etc.
- themitigating 4y ago
  That just shows the effects but not whether people were more distracted in the past
  - mat_epice 4y ago
    You responded to the second sentence, not the first. "The early chapters of Stolen Focus by Johann Hari provides a good overview of the research, which shows that people are increasingly switching their attention from one thing to another"
    - jjulius 4y ago
      It's okay, they just got distracted! :P
    - AlexErrant 4y ago
      Screenshot of 4 relevant pages from the book: https://i.imgur.com/AwwdEc4.png https://i.imgur.com/AwwdEc4.png The most important part, for me, was this bit: > What they discovered is there is one mechanism that can make this happen every time. You just have to flood the system with more information. The more information you pump in, the less time people can focus on any individual piece of it.
contravariant 4y ago
Can't recall many people trying to read a book on a bike. For some reason they seem to think it will work when the book is electronic and small enough.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > For some reason they seem to think it will work when the book is electronic and small enough. Do you mean a stationary exercise bike? I don't read books on those because I am usually sweating and I don't want to get that on the book. Also, most paperbacks are pretty springy, so sometimes I need to have one hand holding them open, or some kind of clip system on the bike. iPads or Kindles don't have these problems, so I can certainly imagine using them instead. I don't, probably because of an irrational aversion to getting anything from the grungy gym on my personal devices.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    > Do you mean a stationary exercise bike? You may be surprised to learn people do text and bike. I’ve done it on occasion when running late to a meetup with friends. It’s … not very safe.
  - periphrasis 4y ago
    When the weather gets nice in nyc, the bike lanes fill up with people slowly meandering about the lane as they cycle one-handed, eyes glued to their cellphones. My unscientific, purely vibes based take is that the ubiquity of the smartphone has created such widespread severe dopamine addiction that basic human judgment and even self preservation instinct is increasingly impaired.
    - rakejake 4y ago
      Well, once when I was out walking, I saw someone peeing on a trail side, dick in one hand, phone in the other. There is a social crisis of some sort and we basically have no idea how to get out of it.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
I'm sure this question is coming from an earnest place, but does it not stand to reason that the sheer amount of information we have almost ubiquitous access to, combined with personalized content recommendation, means that we are more distracted than a medieval person who had no exposure to such things? How would one even try to assert this empirically?
- vasco 4y ago
  A medieval person also didn't go through school, likely wasn't taught how to read or forced to work through math problems and do almost 20 years of schooling with the intention of improving their thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention. So it is not obvious at all which effects dominate and if this isn't just the same drivel that Gessner spouted in the 1500's about how books and the printing press were going to create an information overload and ruin our attention - https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-technology-scares-from-the-printing-press-to-facebook.html https://slate.com/technology/2010/02/a-history-of-media-tech... - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3654293
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Wouldn't they have to be more mindful of safety and personal health. Like an increase in dangers from criminals, food, buildings, etc
  - BitwiseFool 4y ago
    Given how popular TikTok and short form content is with the younger generations who are currently in school or just graduated from 20 something years of schooling, I don't think all that intention of improving their "thinking skills, analytical skills, memory and attention" is that effective at countering contemporary distractions. Have you seen the latest trend where Gen Z'ers zone out by watching a TikTok that has a family guy clip, some arts and crafts clip, and some gameplay footage all on the same screen? It is the epitome of distraction and it's catching on like wildfire because people watching these switch between each subject on screen just enough to hold their attention. The algorithm is rewarding that, so more and more TikToks have composite videos. Going back to the subject of contemporary education, one could also speculate that ~20 years of schooling replacing ~20 years of apprenticeship and mastery of a single craft makes the ability to resist distraction worse. Perhaps teaching someone to make wagon wheels for 20 years makes them better able to focus on a single thing than teaching them to learn all sorts of different subjects for a few hours each day? People like to look back at previous generation's moral panics, but I can't help but think there was an element of truth to many of them.
coding123 4y ago
It's obvious
bongoman37 4y ago
[dead]

StrictDabbler 4y ago

Previous societies never required that 80% of the working population be scribes. Being a scribe is hard. It was an unusual ability to such an extent that it reinforced the medieval notion of a "vocation" (a calling or duty to do this work). Now we require every worker who wants to rise above the level of retail sales to be capable of spending hours a day going down columns of detailed textual data in Excel or Airtables, or managing a queue of e-mails, or smoothly transitioning between inventory and maintenance. It is less that we are more distracted or distractable now and more that our current tasks are significantly affected by distraction. We're being forced by the labor market to pretend that we aren't chimpanzees.

Nevermark 4y ago
> It is less that we are more distracted or distractable now and more that our current tasks are significantly affected by distraction. Clearly both? Processing dry material on a screen, that also offers endlessly seductive doom scrolling opportunities? Sandwiched productivity & entertaining unproductively closer than its ever been! It would be like a scribe trying to copy an endless and far too familiar religious text, while avoiding the pull of the odd pages, which all depict explicit colorful animated scenes of delicious sin.
- bibanez 4y ago
  That is a great analogy! Technology is this wonderful book, so is it reasonable to expect that we won't read half of it?
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    Exactly! It's like the garden of Eden, but every other tree is the kind you're not supposed to eat from. And they have nicer fruit! I think were are characterizing this problem well. Now how do we monetize this? Let people outsource discipline, which we provide, but in a gamified, low customer effort way? I see enterprise potential.
- birdyrooster 4y ago

cheq 4y ago

In highschool, a teacher told me that 'comparisions are usually bad arguments', and that shit stuck with me for a long time.

gretch 4y ago
Um, I mean is it even true? Did they offer any insight on why this is the case? Comparing a new thing to an old familiar thing or a current fact can really help people overcome irrational bias against the fear of the unknown. Metaphors, similes, and analogies are all comparisons and all recognized as powerful forms of rhetoric.
- datavirtue 4y ago
  "Metaphors, similes, and analogies.." all of which are seductive and cause us to think we know more than we really do.
  - dTal 4y ago
    According to Hosfstader, Lakoff and others, metaphor is the core of cognition, the basic algorithm upon which all else runs. It is deeply embedded in the way we perceive the world, and this is reflected in our language; Lakoff catalogued some of the "metaphors we live by" in his book of the same name, and it is surprising how transparently we use metaphor all the time without even being aware of it. As an intuition pump, consider the following vaguely associated words and their antonyms: up / good / positive / forwards / fast / white / on / daytime / hot / red / aroused / friendly down / bad / negative / backwards / slow / black / off / nighttime / cold / blue / bored / indifferent I'm sure you can add more. You can pick almost any pair of these words and find a phrase that relates them - "I'm feeling blue because Claire called off our date; she's been cold ever since Dave bad-mouthed her."
    - datavirtue 4y ago
      Interesting, that book caused me to question what I really know and hold my views on metaphore. When you see slime mold "learning" and decent AI emerging, it really starts to throw a wet towel on how amazing we think humans are in general because of our intelligence. Then there's election night.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

And, importantly, technology today is expressly designed, with legions of extremely smart PhDs building in instantaneous feedback loops, to keep you as addicted as possible. And these experts' job performance is specifically rated on how good they are at addicting you.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Therefore, the people who confidently proclaim that this new level of distraction-engineering is the no different from the distractions of a previous era probably have something to gain from from your hijacked attention. Maybe a bonus at work for coding it into an app to such a successful degree.

agumonkey 4y ago

It's a phrase transition or threshold effect. The constant, lag, effort, "cost" free stimulation is indeed different. I have to manage my mood through sports and or fasting to hope my brain can sustain more than 10 min of calm reading. I still have "open tab" reflexes anytime I get next to my laptop and my eyes shift left regularly just as-if there were some google news side bar stream coming.