Hacker News Reader

Comment by bizzleDawg | Hacker News Reader

I may be reading this incorrectly, but in the article, the 65% appears to be authors confidence in the statement that attention spans appear to be declining, as denoted by the sub-script. Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span".

Various other assertions in the post also have sub-script confidences associated e.g. "my guess: yes90%".

I could totally believe that there has been a 65% decline in attention span. "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari certainly makes 65% seem conservative!

View on HN

> Whereas in the HN title it reads as if it's saying a "65% decline in attention span".

Perhaps the submitter's attention span ran out.

For related reasons, I like the blog's claim that much of the difficulty in establishing whether the proposition is true or not is because none of the wealth of literature on attention span was in the form of long term studies. Perhaps the researchers got bored and moved on to something else!

I know that HN is maybe not a place for such comments, but I strongly belive we need to make "attention span overflow" a thing

(I'm not sure if you were joking or not and I know it's probably not in the same spirit you intended it here / a bit OT but...) I've been using literally that exact expression for a while to describe the situation in which, during somewhat complex discussions within a group, in order to not be perceived as jerks participants are forced to follow an unnecessarily long, repetitive, trivial and most often also completely pointless "line of reasoning" just to have their own attention completely derailed from any productive/actually-interesting argument anyone was trying to make, often ultimately resulting in giving up because recalling those lost mental threads is by then even more difficult and there is only so much mental energy (for you and collectively) to dedicate to that discussion.

Just saying, imho it's already a thing (with different incarnations in different contexts).

I didn't even have the attention span to unpack your first sentence.

I got what they were saying...

They said: When many words said, no listen more, so say "attention span overflow" instead of yawn.

Reordering and paraphrasing what they actually wrote:

I've been using that expression when giving up on participating during discussions.

Other people's line of reasoning are unnecessarily long, repetitive, trivial and most often also completely pointless. This derails my own productive/actually-interesting argument because I only have so much mental energy.

Was this a joke? The mega sentence would seem to be perfect example of your point.

This is definitely a thing, but at least in my experience, it is also a thing that narcissists do. They can dig up emails and examples from the dark caverns where you were just having a water cooler chat, and they somehow took it as very serious and something you should have meant to defend if it left your lips.

Attention span overflow. ;)

“75% chance of rain”:

1. It will definitely rain, on 75% of the relevant area.

2. It will definitely rain, for 75% of the relevant time period.

3. It will rain with an intensity of 75% of the maximum our instruments can measure.

4. Three out of four meteorologists think it will rain.

5. It will rain on 75% of the population.

6. It will rain on everyone, but 75% of the population forgot their umbrella.

7. It will rai

8. 25% chance of dry.

9. 25% chance of snow.

10. When you become trapped in a Groundhog Day-type loop and are forced to repeat today three more times, then a subsequent analysis will show that it rained on exactly three of the four total days. Probably.

11. The betting pool amongst meteorologists has 3:1 odds for rain.

4:1

I know what you did here. I am taking my Mg/K supplements to keep up my attention.

Why is it 4:1 instead of 3:1?

3:1 means that you bet $1 four times on the 25%, lose money three times and make back $3 the last time.

With how much the weather has messed with me lately, it seems that weather predictions mean all of these at once.

Thanks for this comment, yes this title is wrong and should be changed. The article's conclusion is:

> It seems likely to me that individual attention spans have declined (I’d give it ~70%), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the decline was relatively small, noisy & dependent on specific tests.

Context since this has now been fixed: the original title as submitted was "Have attention spans been declining? – Yes, 65%". The bit after the dash was erroneously added by the submitter and was not part of the article's actual title.

Yep, fixed now. Thanks

The article was long so the 65% was the TLDR summary. For people like me with no attention span it was very helpful.

But as OP mentions, the 65% as printed in the title conveyed the false impression that there's been a 65% decline in attention spans, whereas the actual tl;dr should have been this sentence from the end:

> It seems likely to me that individual attention spans have declined (I’d give it ~70%), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the decline was relatively small, noisy & dependent on specific tests.

It would be nice if HN titles actually had to match submission titles.

They are often updated to reflect the link title, in cases where the title by the submitter isn't great.

There are some good reasons this isn't the case. Often the submission title itself has something wrong in it, or is click-bait-y, or just needs some pointless fat trimmed from it to get to the point.

It's definitely not black and white.

But if the source can't get the title right in a clean and objective sort or way, isn't that a signal for "there's got to be a better source"? For example, how many times have we've seen a click-bait-y title followed by content or narrative reflective of that mindset?

Click bait makes money. Unless some special magic is going on with a publication they'll all use click bait titles.

The actual articles are often not as clickbaity as the titles. Also, sometimes there is no alternate source.

Well, it's a balancing act. The original title may represent the article more accurately than the submitter's title, or it may be misleading clickbait and the submitter is trying to improve that. The policy here seems to be the best middle ground we can do, mostly go by the original title but also be ready to edit away from clickbait (which of course is subjective.)

Relax, dang usually fixes them anyway

35% of the time at least

I have 35% confidence in this

35% of the time he fixes them 100% of the time

Disagree. Article titles on the web are often very bad. Often this is for clickbait reasons, but also frequently just because the author was not writing for the HN front page as their audience. Almost always, I prefer the rewritten headlines on HN. However, this seems labor intensive to accomplish, and there is usually a delay before the edited title appears. What I wish is for article submitters to consider the use case, and rewrite the headline to conform to HN guidelines on submission.

It would be nice if they either did or didn't. The current system where submitters are encouraged to carefully choose a title and moderators are encouraged to stomp on it is the worst of both worlds.

Some headlines are absurdly long and don’t fit in the HN title box.

Thanks for mentioning that book. I am trying to decide if it's worth reading. The negative reviews agree with the main premise of the book but say it's short and superficial. Is there information in there worth reading beyond the usual tips ie keeping your phone in another room, avoid news first thing in the morning, no screen time 2 hours before bed, long cardio workouts, etc?

"Short and superficial" is appropriate for a book that discusses shortened attention spans! ;-)

I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a practical title, though there are a few practical tips along the lines you mention, the point of the book is more about the societal problem than the individual. But as someone who gets highly frustrated with my inability to focus on occasion, I would say it's reasonably cathartic.

Thank you. I'm going to pass on this one

You should look at Matthew Sweet's responses to that book, it's not pretty: https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591249084826...

It's also worth noting that Johann Hari has an extensive history as a liar.

TIL. Thank you

I think he got done once or twice for plagiarism, what's the "extensive history as a liar"?

Ooof, that’s quite serious.

Would be nice if there was a list of self-help/psychology books that are properly based on proper science.

It is more about highlighting the issues than it is about outlining specific fixes, honestly. But i thoroughly enjoyed it.

How do you deal with too much information if not by reducing the attention span anyway? There is no time to focus, no?

You develop the skill of quickly determining what deserves your attention and what does not. Having a long attention span doesn't imply you give everything your full attention.

How does that make you feel good compared to reading a couple short feel-good or activating short articles?

I don't think I understand the question. Do articles make you feel good because they're short, rather than because of what they contain?

My point is the effect feel-good, whether it is achieved by avoiding fluff, by (over-)simplifying, by some special content that can only be shown in short form or by feeling more knowledgeable. If you can read more of them, you feel better. I just wondered whether this is the reason few develop the skill - it is mostly not worth the time with no one around usually caring (whether you are superficial or not).

> You can't manage what you can't measure.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a probability attached to that statement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com