3 ms·

>reading writing I think it depends precisely what you are doing. There is a difference between low cognitive effort (e.g. reading) and high effort (e.g. creat

>reading writing I think it depends precisely what you are doing. There is a difference between low cognitive effort (e.g. reading) and high effort (e.g. creating an algorithm or playing chess). Low effort uses glucose, whereas high-effort requires the microglia (the brain's immune cells) to create lactate and transport it to the neurons. Excess microglia activation has been linked to anxiety, depression and neuroinflammation. I suspect it's not physically possible for a chess grandmaster to play for 90 hours a week, but probably quite easy for the average person to read or write for 90 hours a week (with some breaks). >start writing a large amount of non-crud code, seven hours is kinda the max. Most programming jobs are just writing "crud code" if you want to call it that...basically mostly meetings, and cranking out banal code. You can certainly do this for 90 hours a week without fatigue, although it will likely lead to burnout in the long-term, so it's probably better to find a job that does require significant mental effort, but without requiring 90 hour weeks.

ramraj07 3y ago
Academic reading is not light reading if you’re doing it right though. It’s much harder than programming for me.
- cpncrunch 3y ago
  Well, again it depends. I was just reading a few reviews on microglia before replying to your comment, in order to update my knowledge, and I would describe it as very light effort...I'd guess I didn't enter into the lactate territory. It's nothing like coming up with an algorithm or trying to solve a problem. The only time I've found it has come close is when actually writing a hypothesis or review paper: having to read through the literature in order to come up with a coherent theory while juggling the concepts in my head. It's very similar to solving a programming problem, and does involve significant mental effort. But it probably also depends on the speed that it's done at. For complex algorithms or prototypes I prefer to just power through and get the whole thing done to the prototype stage in half a day (or whatever it takes, depending on the complexity), then spend the next month (or whatever) fleshing it out. There are probably other ways of doing it that don't require such cognitive effort at the beginning, but I find that for complex problems that's sometimes the best way of solving them, at least in my experience, and it only involves significant mental effort for a very short period of time.
aflukasz 3y ago
> Most programming jobs are just writing "crud code" if you want to call it that...basically mostly meetings, and cranking out banal code. I would say that in such instances, often times the code is banal, but proper modeling of the reality, even in cases where final result looks like a classical crud, is where complexity hides. I say "hides", because, from my experience, only those directly involved in the implementation are actually mentally exposed to it. If they care about the quality of the output, that is.

ramraj07 3y ago

Academic reading is not light reading if you’re doing it right though. It’s much harder than programming for me.

cpncrunch 3y ago
Well, again it depends. I was just reading a few reviews on microglia before replying to your comment, in order to update my knowledge, and I would describe it as very light effort...I'd guess I didn't enter into the lactate territory. It's nothing like coming up with an algorithm or trying to solve a problem. The only time I've found it has come close is when actually writing a hypothesis or review paper: having to read through the literature in order to come up with a coherent theory while juggling the concepts in my head. It's very similar to solving a programming problem, and does involve significant mental effort. But it probably also depends on the speed that it's done at. For complex algorithms or prototypes I prefer to just power through and get the whole thing done to the prototype stage in half a day (or whatever it takes, depending on the complexity), then spend the next month (or whatever) fleshing it out. There are probably other ways of doing it that don't require such cognitive effort at the beginning, but I find that for complex problems that's sometimes the best way of solving them, at least in my experience, and it only involves significant mental effort for a very short period of time.

aflukasz 3y ago

> Most programming jobs are just writing "crud code" if you want to call it that...basically mostly meetings, and cranking out banal code. I would say that in such instances, often times the code is banal, but proper modeling of the reality, even in cases where final result looks like a classical crud, is where complexity hides. I say "hides", because, from my experience, only those directly involved in the implementation are actually mentally exposed to it. If they care about the quality of the output, that is.