4 ms·

Permit me to tie a couple of personal observation on this topic. I do not think we "lost" our ability. I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has

Permit me to tie a couple of personal observation on this topic. I do not think we "lost" our ability. I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". As we all have heard, to become an expert, on average we need to pursue the subject for 10 thousand hours (? Malcolm Gladwell). But, we do not need to spend 20 years practicing. We can obtain "good enough" in a few weeks, or even few hours (obviously depending on the subject). For example, to win the Grand Prix de la baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris (i.e., French Baguette Competition of Paris), many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. I can teach you in a day how to make an edible baguette that the average consumer will enjoy. I think our "attention span" has shifted to "good enough" in many instances. I do not think this destroyed our attention span capability, it just made it slightly different. Final anecdote to "prove" my point we did not lose our attention. I have taken ADHD-diagnosed boys to camp and fish. Of the twelve (ages 12-16), only one could not sit patiently and watch the line and bobber for extended period. He became bored, and started whittling for the same amount of time. Once they returned to "civilization", they "became" ADHD again. As someone already noted, in my experience humans cannot multitask. We can context switch, some very slowly, and some very fast. But, we do not multitask.

Terr_ 3y ago
> I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". [...] For example, to win [a famous baguette competition] many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. Hasn't it always been that way, though? Decades or centuries ago we've been doing things (e.g. breadmaking) with fewer resources and worse tools and tighter margins, so "good enough" was probably even more important, rather than less. Great works were often made despite those limits, rather than in concert with them. Surely the techniques and investments used in competition are not the same ones that baker would use to feed a large hungry crowd. "Perfect" probably only showed up either (A) where that's just the next frontier for a successful professional to stay engaged in their craft or promote their brand and (B) products commissioned by figurative if not literal royalty.
- kshacker 3y ago
  My attention span is making me re-read your comment to decipher whether I agree or disagree. Jury is still out on this one :) Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality of the presentation (audio, music, harmony within the team) and was thinking on the same lines - good vs good enough, and how this team working in the 70s made musical magic. I think the constraints those days made the masters really practice practice practice so that they could be great at the spur of the moment. A lot of people today may be more expert in synthesizing music so they can take a second's worth of snippet here, 5 seconds of snippets there, and eventually make something good, but it is all editing and they may not be able to do that live, but the old timey greats had to perform live, and for that they had to be great. I am not saying no one does live music nowadays, quite the contrary, just saying that a lot of great music comes from people who never do live music, and that is because they can afford the luxury of 'editing' (which is kinda similar to divided attention span). Similarly, for the baker once the bread has gone bad there is nothing they can do but to start over, and that would be the incentive to get everything right.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    I think my underlying thesis probably renders to something like: The idea that people in the past had personalities that valued the pursuit of perfection more-highly than now is often assumed, but seldom is good evidence given to support it. In many cases it may be explained by survivorship-bias or by applying inaccurate modern assumptions about the relative costs of different materials/labor and the prestige/rarity of events. > Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality Example "humans weren't fundamentally different" hypothesis: When it is more expensive to make multiple attempts, people invest more effort into making sure they do very good attempts, in order to avoid the downside risk. This does not mean they would not have gladly chosen an average-result if dramatically lower production costs were possible. Therefore the difference does not stem from a change in mentality, but from economic factors. ___________ It's kind of like looking at airplanes of the 1950s, with beds and champagne and caviar, and ruefully comparing them to the ones of the 2020s. Is it because airlines became greedier? Did the average passenger (in the same income-bracket) lose their desire for fine things? Nah: It's probably because once you remember to adjust for inflation, those 1950s passengers were paying $7,300 per flight instead of today's $600. [0] https://www.eastcoastdaily.in/2021/01/02/1950s-when-airplanes-had-beds-with-champagne-and-caviar-air-travel-looked-like-a-train-journey.html https://www.eastcoastdaily.in/2021/01/02/1950s-when-airplane...
fleischhauf 3y ago
ADHD is a physical change in the brain tho, it goes so far that it alters the effects of drugs like cocaine
- krypton2k 3y ago
  Do you have any more information or links about this please?
pwpw 3y ago
> Final anecdote to "prove" my point we did not lose our attention. I have taken ADHD-diagnosed boys to camp and fish. Of the twelve (ages 12-16), only one could not sit patiently and watch the line and bobber for extended period. You’re completely misrepresenting ADHD, so I don’t see how this anecdote proves your point. ADHD isn’t the inability to focus. In fact, it often comes with the ability to hyperfocus better than neurotypical minds. ADHD is the inability to regulate focus on specific activities, particularly ones that are boring and not what the individual finds stimulating. Camping and fishing are not what I would typically consider a difficult task to focus on for someone with ADHD. Especially because it’s a physical activity, which are often better suited for an ADHD mind rather than mental tasks that involve being sedentary. Perhaps what you’re unintentionally getting at is people with ADHD are much better suited for specific tasks than neurotypicals, and society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD.
- BirdieNZ 3y ago
  > society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD. As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I think this misrepresents ADHD. There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage; in a hunter-gatherer society, my tent would still be untidy and I'd still procrastinate fixing my spear before the hunt until the day before, and I'd still lose focus during the hunt and miss the deer walking past, because I was watching ants move sticks around. ADHD is a disability, not a difference of ability. It's not very enjoyable for me to accept as I'm reasonably bright, but I'm mentally disabled in a way that someone of equivalent intelligence without ADHD is not. They can more easily achieve what they want in life than I can. I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without; there are tasks which are less difficult for the person with ADHD than other tasks, but ADHD doesn't bestow many, if any, advantages over a neurotypical person. There was a recent brief blog post[1] on this from Scott Alexander, if you're curious to read more, but I've come to the same conclusion independently. [1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-disability https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-mode...
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
watwut 3y ago
The 10000 thing was always pseudoscience anyway. What happened in the past is that you obtained good enough with a lot more hours and effort then now. And perfection, however you define it, was even further out of reach.
js8 3y ago
> I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". I think you're correct, but I would also argue that this makes everybody worse off, and therefore, is a wrong trend. It cancels, to some extent, the advantages of division of labor, because the society is chasing diversity of experience rather than depth of it. It is also impractical because now each individual has to deal with more flaws of good enough products, which pulls everybody down.

Terr_ 3y ago

> I think we changed our thinking. I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". [...] For example, to win [a famous baguette competition] many spend a lifetime perfecting their craft. Hasn't it always been that way, though? Decades or centuries ago we've been doing things (e.g. breadmaking) with fewer resources and worse tools and tighter margins, so "good enough" was probably even more important, rather than less. Great works were often made despite those limits, rather than in concert with them. Surely the techniques and investments used in competition are not the same ones that baker would use to feed a large hungry crowd. "Perfect" probably only showed up either (A) where that's just the next frontier for a successful professional to stay engaged in their craft or promote their brand and (B) products commissioned by figurative if not literal royalty.

kshacker 3y ago
My attention span is making me re-read your comment to decipher whether I agree or disagree. Jury is still out on this one :) Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality of the presentation (audio, music, harmony within the team) and was thinking on the same lines - good vs good enough, and how this team working in the 70s made musical magic. I think the constraints those days made the masters really practice practice practice so that they could be great at the spur of the moment. A lot of people today may be more expert in synthesizing music so they can take a second's worth of snippet here, 5 seconds of snippets there, and eventually make something good, but it is all editing and they may not be able to do that live, but the old timey greats had to perform live, and for that they had to be great. I am not saying no one does live music nowadays, quite the contrary, just saying that a lot of great music comes from people who never do live music, and that is because they can afford the luxury of 'editing' (which is kinda similar to divided attention span). Similarly, for the baker once the bread has gone bad there is nothing they can do but to start over, and that would be the incentive to get everything right.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  I think my underlying thesis probably renders to something like: The idea that people in the past had personalities that valued the pursuit of perfection more-highly than now is often assumed, but seldom is good evidence given to support it. In many cases it may be explained by survivorship-bias or by applying inaccurate modern assumptions about the relative costs of different materials/labor and the prestige/rarity of events. > Anyways, over a decade back, I was watching a recording of a musical artist from either the 70s or 80s, and was surprised at the quality Example "humans weren't fundamentally different" hypothesis: When it is more expensive to make multiple attempts, people invest more effort into making sure they do very good attempts, in order to avoid the downside risk. This does not mean they would not have gladly chosen an average-result if dramatically lower production costs were possible. Therefore the difference does not stem from a change in mentality, but from economic factors. ___________ It's kind of like looking at airplanes of the 1950s, with beds and champagne and caviar, and ruefully comparing them to the ones of the 2020s. Is it because airlines became greedier? Did the average passenger (in the same income-bracket) lose their desire for fine things? Nah: It's probably because once you remember to adjust for inflation, those 1950s passengers were paying $7,300 per flight instead of today's $600. [0] https://www.eastcoastdaily.in/2021/01/02/1950s-when-airplanes-had-beds-with-champagne-and-caviar-air-travel-looked-like-a-train-journey.html https://www.eastcoastdaily.in/2021/01/02/1950s-when-airplane...

fleischhauf 3y ago

ADHD is a physical change in the brain tho, it goes so far that it alters the effects of drugs like cocaine

krypton2k 3y ago
Do you have any more information or links about this please?

pwpw 3y ago

> Final anecdote to "prove" my point we did not lose our attention. I have taken ADHD-diagnosed boys to camp and fish. Of the twelve (ages 12-16), only one could not sit patiently and watch the line and bobber for extended period. You’re completely misrepresenting ADHD, so I don’t see how this anecdote proves your point. ADHD isn’t the inability to focus. In fact, it often comes with the ability to hyperfocus better than neurotypical minds. ADHD is the inability to regulate focus on specific activities, particularly ones that are boring and not what the individual finds stimulating. Camping and fishing are not what I would typically consider a difficult task to focus on for someone with ADHD. Especially because it’s a physical activity, which are often better suited for an ADHD mind rather than mental tasks that involve being sedentary. Perhaps what you’re unintentionally getting at is people with ADHD are much better suited for specific tasks than neurotypicals, and society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD.

BirdieNZ 3y ago
> society is largely set up to favor neurotypicals at the expense of those with ADHD. As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I think this misrepresents ADHD. There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage; in a hunter-gatherer society, my tent would still be untidy and I'd still procrastinate fixing my spear before the hunt until the day before, and I'd still lose focus during the hunt and miss the deer walking past, because I was watching ants move sticks around. ADHD is a disability, not a difference of ability. It's not very enjoyable for me to accept as I'm reasonably bright, but I'm mentally disabled in a way that someone of equivalent intelligence without ADHD is not. They can more easily achieve what they want in life than I can. I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without; there are tasks which are less difficult for the person with ADHD than other tasks, but ADHD doesn't bestow many, if any, advantages over a neurotypical person. There was a recent brief blog post[1] on this from Scott Alexander, if you're curious to read more, but I've come to the same conclusion independently. [1]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-disability https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-the-social-mode...
- JonChesterfield 3y ago

watwut 3y ago

The 10000 thing was always pseudoscience anyway. What happened in the past is that you obtained good enough with a lot more hours and effort then now. And perfection, however you define it, was even further out of reach.

js8 3y ago

> I think the world has mostly accepted the "good enough" versus "perfect". I think you're correct, but I would also argue that this makes everybody worse off, and therefore, is a wrong trend. It cancels, to some extent, the advantages of division of labor, because the society is chasing diversity of experience rather than depth of it. It is also impractical because now each individual has to deal with more flaws of good enough products, which pulls everybody down.