Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival
amirsharif.com
amirsharif.com
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 It has not been peer-reviewed.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 activity' is a positive outcome does not follow. Brain connectivity might be analagous to inefficiency as opposed to the reported 'engagement' or 'cognitive debt'.
I disagree. I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of the readers here would have known in the context of that headline exactly what "The Dopamine Carnival" meant, without needing any specific positive or negative implications about dopamine in general or it's actual biochemical mechanisms. It's blatantly obviously about social media and mobile apps that are intentionally designed to manipulate your brain and its reward system.
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 study where the students are told the essay is practice, and their success will be graded on how much they've learned about the topic.
I imagine you could conduct a similar study challenging students to complete math tasks with and without a calculator and then ask them how much of their multiplication tables they've learned afterwards.
If you want to learn and grow as a person, along some dimension, you need to practice. Growing requires repetition and reflection and to experience the feedback loop of improvement. Outsource thinking for whatever task you don't want to do when the only result you care about is the only outcome. Don't outsource practice and learning if you want to improve. Only you can make the decision on when each situation applies in your day. Maybe you want to be better at some task at your job, but maybe you just need to get through the task and move on.
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.
Edit - As an aside, it just occurred to me that I am both a functional strength and functional programming proponent (facepalm). Perhaps in the future after people seeking to strengthen their minds through via mental gymnastics, FP will see a renaissance
It grows when a person trains to be a London cab driver (no GPS allowed). [0]
Yet abilities decline as GPS use is used. [1]
These aren’t huge studies either, but also fall under the larger, “use it or lose it,” umbrella.
The problem is if you are driving a car to go the same speed and distance as walking then it is missing the point.
That is my biggest problem with most Multifactor authentication. I try to leave my phone in another room to focus, but needing the phone authenticator for something always happens within two hours.
I still don't know why apps think a device I carry in the streets is safer than one I leave at home to do important transactions like moving money, for example. Where I live, there are a lot of cases of people being kidnapped and coerced to make payments (which are instant), yet no Banking app allows you to do anything without a phone.
The worst one is Mercado Libre, which also requires you to use your phone to "scan" your face every time you log in with a new device. My friends were locked out due to having an allergy or growing a beard. Nowadays, I don't even bother with them... I just shop elsewhere.
The most realistic security threat for OTP's is that they can be phished in a few ways which is the same problem if you're using MFA stored on your desktop or phone. Hence the preference for physical security keys / passkeys which are impossible to phish.
Muggings and kidnappings, as bad as they are, can't really be done at scale.
That device a) has some kind of secure enclave, hopefully, and more importantly b) restricts your ability to run arbitrary code off the internet to the point that everyday users probably can't do it. I don't like it, but they do it because it's effective.
Because MFA requirements have never been about security, only security theater. It's the modern version of the "you must change your password every 30 days" rule.
MFA is like infinitely more secure than your username/pw that Tim from accounting writes on his notes and reuses the same password everywhere.
How is that not common knowledge?
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.
(Lately I've been using "It's a work phone, I'm not able to install apps on it, you'll need to run your app past our corporate IT and Security team.")
This is for authentication ?
It's quite possible to live with websites.
And that you don't ever add website bookmarks to the homescreen, because that makes them similar to apps.
The app guys have normalized the idea that every "bright" idea they get about how to exploit my data or waste my attention, they have a right to push it out to my phone, if I have installed their app.
So the stupid apps keep updating with new shit everyday whether I need it or not.
Those services just have SFA (Single Factor Authentication): the cell phone number (which can be stolen remotely by social engineering).
That turns the laptop + fingerprint into your extra factors.
I’ll be traveling later this year and I’m debating buying an iPad mini so I have a 2nd authenticated device that can do 2FA. I broke a phone on a trip once and happened to have an iPad with me. It was the only reason I was able to get my replacement phone setup. I’m not sure what I would have done without it. Print and carry around account recovery details that should likely be kept in a safe? That doesn’t sound great.
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.
They are a social media trend addict, just like anyone else. Because the gen-z stare is a new meme that bubbled up to the top of social media infinite scrool content in the last week.
I have noticed that some young people (~18-30 yo) lose attention within as little as 5 seconds. I could have someone choose a card and in that amount of time, they have spaced out -- no phone, just staring blankly. I have two rubber bands examined and by the time they are handed back, someone is on their phone.
The most annoying part is that -- because I construct my routines for minimal attention spans -- within 2 more seconds, something magic happens and everyone who's paying attention reacts. And the 1-2 young people who zoned out start panicking about the FOMO, "what happened?" "do it again!" Sorry folks!
> With this, a lot of Gen Z “clapped back,” if you will (this essentially means they rebutted), saying that this stare comes from listening to Boomers or Millennials ask them obvious questions or start demanding things from them that warrant a look that says, “Are you actually serious right now?” or “I don’t get paid enough for this.”
https://www.insidehook.com/internet/gen-z-stare (first result after searching "gen z stare" on DDG)
Not saying some people don't get bored and start looking at their phones way too fast (uh, like drivers at a stop light? that's not limited to gen z), just that there might be another reason for any given blank stare.
I’ve seen so many ads that show a nice product, so I click and it takes me to nice polished landing page, which leads to a smooth checkout flow. But then the thing arrives and it’s garbage. I believe that there’s an entire genre of niche-marketed consumer goods that have been broken by Campbell/Goodharts law because they’ve integrated the product design and marketing so tightly that the product is designed to optimize CTR and funnel conversions rather than being a good at being the thing that it is.
Granted, it was by and for college students, so there was an inherent selection bias. Still, Zuckerberg built his whole empire on getting enough data about people to show ads that are so targeted they feel relevant.
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 of a mentally stable person to TikTok is like the reaction of a normal person to a casino full of slot machines--discomfort and more than a little disgust. If you start wagging your tail to that shit, there is no safe level and you need to delete it all yesterday, app timers and clever little boxes are making you worse.
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 all organized on WhatsApp. If I choose not to have a Meta account then my kids suffer when I am out of the loop on their events. Then of course all of the invites and venues are on Facebook. And all the parents post their pics to IG.
Because these apps are purposely designed to addict you, it is a real sticky thing to have to dip your toes in without getting sucked into a scrolling nightmare.
Some apps are addictive but have some reasonable informational value. Some are just straight key bumps of entertainment with an algorithmic comedown to keep you looking for the next baggie.
I have the same situation you do about Facebook, but still don't have the app on my phone. I just check the mobile site and I was forced to install messenger. I have no need or desire to install things like TikTok or Instagram, of the hundreds of times people have sent me links to things on those apps I've never come away with the feeling that it was a value add.
Most of the time that I get sucked into a website, it’s because autocomplete and muscle memory got me there without thinking. Every once in a while I’ll clean out my history cache and for a week or so I’ll find myself on the page of google search results for “re” or “fa”
Chrome does have this feature on mobile, but perhaps not on your mobile.
[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/blaaajhemilngeeffpb...
How much can you really learn from even a 30 second Feynman lecture?
It’s still mindless consumption if you don’t interact with the material in any meaningful way (follow up questions, application, try to refute it, evaluate a hypothesis you had before watching it, …)
You always lose what you don't use over a long enough time window and in proportion to how much you used it when you did use it. Everything that is true about this 10 minute video is true about a college course. You just retain the college course for longer because (presumably) you've spent more time in class than a 10 minutes video and you've done your homework. But if you don't use it after college, there's a strong chance you've forgotten the details.
Sometimes it's just important to know a thing exists, what it can be used for, and roughly how it is used. Everything else can be learned or refreshed when you need it.
Suppose you've watched that stats 101 video but didn't follow up. You now know:
- The broad strokes of stats 101 even if you don't have perfect recall on the details.
- What it can be used for.
- Whether the particular video is worth watching when and if you do need to use it.
Initial exposure is important. A claim could be made that if nothing is ever done with it, it is a waste; but how does someone without any knowledge know enough to decide whether they should go further with it or not?
heck...damn... that was a lot of fun in the Job's area, steve Jobs official presented his 1st Ipad showing an interactive Book for children but also adults, and for sure there was something to learn.
> But... Does it also let you unset any limits?
Nah they never released any well known interactive books as far as i know, so i didn't bought that ipad. But was interested in the 'screen-only'-technology since 2003 (bought my first tablet PC around 2005)...
A few days ago, there was a topic about the book 'neuromancer' could you even imagine such a book as interactive (not a game) ?
It may took years and a hell of a crowd to finish something like that satisfying enough to get only a niche of people.
HINT: The Message of the Book (the Punk-Part) was about: 'Everybody needs money (Products) so you have to get a job.'
Quoting more "nonsens" but remarkable;
It's quite possible to live with websites. Nothing else.
Clue: Apps let you set a limit on withdrawals when you are away from home.
(edited: found some typos^^) You enjoyed the ads, but do you enjoy the products designed to optimize Clickrates and funnel conversions?
And if it was too OT, think just a random person typing something...never mind...
ᬛ btw: google didn't show, what does that mean - it has more speculated 'space' one screen than the regular charsetting, tinyer chars i had known and seen before...but... ??
You just have to look at language learning. Some people who move abroad to a different country with a different language can (over a couple of years) forget huge parts of their own native language.
The internet bombards us with tons of information from all over the place. Even those who have curious minds aren't practicing enough additional engagement to remember all of that information.
Sometimes I feel sad using the internet in the same way I feel going to bookstores. I see so much that interests me but know I only have the capacity to remember, learn, or read so much of it. There may be time to skim a lot of it at surface level, but there isn't enough time and capacity to dive deep into it all.
Quick fun facts on TikTok and Reddit, as well as quick searching and skimming of Google/ChatGPT/Wikipedia are only conducive to superficial learning, unless you are doing something more to wrap that knowledge around your brain (i.e. using it in work/a project, expanding the context in your mind by writing an essay, reading more of it).
This is very much the by-product of the times we live in. Less people are truly learning things, and instead we are learning how to find the information we need. We have things like the internet sitting there, so we take the path of least resistance and use them as and when we need them. It works fine until you don't have an internet connection.
This point is the most important callout to me. This is a macrocosm of how I focus on tasks as a person with already disastrous dopamine interactions (severe ADHD).
I was actually thinking about this last night, when I noticed that I approached the self-checkout at the grocery store with more items than the two people who'd been there before me, and left before either of them had finished checking out despite not being in any particular rush.
When I'm going about my day, I am thinking about the actions I'm going to take, deliberating on them and deciding my intent prior to when I will need to execute it. Not to a significant degree, but to go back to my grocery store anecdote: when I was waiting in line I was preparing myself to execute these tasks:
1. Set my re-usable bags in the bagging area.
2. Respond to the prompt asking me if I have placed bags there.
3. Enter my loyalty code.
4. Scan the rigid and heavier items first, placing them in the bottom of the bags.
5. Scan the lighter, crushable items last.
6. Select my payment method.
7. Tap my payment card, and respond to the PIN prompts.
8. Retrieve my bags and receipt.
This sounds like a lot, looking at it. Maybe it was early on, but now this is such a natural part of my cognitive load that I didn't even specifically notice that I do it until I wondered about the speed difference I observed.
To further reinforce the hypothesis, I thought about the most recent times that I did something completely unstructured with no idea what I would have to do (or at least no solid plan due to the event being controlled by other people) and concluded that I was generally slower to act and felt less able to respond to stimuli appropriately.
This is all to say, given these observations and the initial recognition of what I use as an ADHD-coping strategy, I wonder if the overuse of social media and similar stimuli effectively reproduces the negative aspects of ADHD on otherwise "normal"-brained individuals.
In any case thanks, this will help me in the future I think.
As for ADHD specifically, it's a wide range of severity over several symptoms - if you find that your life is impacted negatively by inability to focus or start on tasks, it may be worth getting tested. But if not, I wouldn't sweat it unless you are just extremely curious.
If you truly want to block yourself from using your phone (or similar) for some amount of time, the Kitchen Safe time-lock boxes are great. They don’t look particularly elegant, nor do they block radio communication, but their unique feature is that you’d have to irreversibly physically break them to access whatever you locked inside before the timer has elapsed. There are many similar products, which however usually have an “emergency” mechanism to preempt the timer, which defeats the purpose.
1) I don't over-rely on the AI so I don't accidentally commit bugs
2) I can just put in a OpenAI API key pay-as-you-go instead of subscribing to Cursor Pro monthly and getting screwed by SaaS fee I don't use
3) I actually learn what the AI says and add it to my long-term memory instead of just having it write code for me in Agent mode
admittedly this only works for small tasks, for bigger edits I think trying to learn everything the AI says is not really scalable or at least it takes me much longer.
Seems like this is the inherent difficulty in being a skillful developer. Atleast in the context of non-trivial collaborative projects, big edits that the person commiting doesn't understand might as well be a diceroll, and imo those big edits should really only be applied if the intent was to save the time in writing it.
And then I needed a logo for my new service I'm building. Search for AI image generator, input the prompt and a few seconds later I have my really cool image. Time saved -> infinity.
But I also thought, all this problem solving done by the machines, leaves my brain unemployed, well not exactly, I can focus on solving issues that usually take hours to solve and get on with it. However those hard nuts are no longer cracked by me, and I focus on the lighter cognitive load.
Probably not good, but idk, I don't have the luxury to be picky, being an unemployed freelancer on social security
Did you just define a term, act like it already existed, then compliment yourself for coming up with it?
It makes doing fun work worse but makes going over the hard parts of the work much easier.
Would highly recommend anyone working from home to try using a chronometer
But the broad point is valid - distraction and subversion of attention is very high in today's society. Some people are overwhelmed and need to take steps.
$249 for a Faraday cage? You can find $10 Faraday bags on Amazon..
I hate this thing. I don't think it added anything to this article to conflate this "study" - did no one stop to think your brain isn't firing on all cylinders when the AI is doing the work because that's what the whole point of AI is?
It's supposed to free up your mind to attend to other matters.
We're not building muscles like we used to when we use tractors and heavy machinery instead of building houses brick by brick by hand either. So what?? Attend a gym and read something technical and dense.
It's my laptop that eats my brain.
IF TRUE and taken at face value, surely it could have nothing to do with AI coding being so new everyone just figuring how to best use a new tool at all once.
No no, best to right out the gate compare the new tool to the decades old process.
Gonna have to run some tricksy ads to sell that thing.
>People are forgetting their intentions when scrolling, with TikTok being the most effective at doing this. It takes 25 minutes to get back to focusing on a task, but only a few seconds to lose that focus.
>You can reverse up to 10 years of age-related cognitive decline simply by blocking mobile data on your phone for 2 weeks.
>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.
>Developers actually take up to 19% longer when coding with AI than without it, but self-report that they were able to complete tasks 20% faster.
All of these are obviously not true. At best some are very strained interpretations of the papers at worst they are very clearly false.
If you believe that "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." or "You can reverse up to 10 years of age-related cognitive decline simply by blocking mobile data on your phone for 2 weeks.", then I have a bridge to sell you. These are so laughably false that it makes the entire sentiment look ridiculous.
People need to be honest about the problems that exist and actually engage with the psychology which drives negative behavior. But to do that the starting point needs to be a clear understanding of what the intentions are. Is TikTok bad, because using it makes you loose focus on other tasks or because you are forgetting your intentions? Certainly a great book does the same exact thing, yet somehow I never see book reading in these articles. So why is one significantly worse than the other? This is obviously a question about values. And unless society can clearly articulate why spending time on reading books is more valuable than spending time scrolling TikTok no change is possible.
"You can reverse up to 10 years of age-related cognitive decline simply by blocking mobile data on your phone for 2 weeks": the linked study says that it's attention span that is improved equivalent to being 10 years younger, as measured immediately after the study ends (only)
"Using ChatGPT on cognitive tasks can reduce your brain connectivity by up to 50%": this is measured using an EEG, so is measuring involvement of multiple brain regions while doing a task. Basically your brain doesn't have to work as hard at the task if you're using an LLM. It's not, you know, your connectome atrophying.
That's kind of the point of most tech. Consider:
"In another eye-opening study, researchers have conclusively shown that your muscles atrophy if you're using a forklift instead of your back!"
this contradicts thought leaders in the field like Andrew Ng
> thought leaders in the field like Andrew Ng
If its still cloudy, a "thought leader" is anyone recognized as an authority in their field, whose ideas and insights influence others and shape the direction of the hype cycle.
I quite like it actually because although I do use AI, I think you really do have to be careful about how you use it to avoid wasting more time than it saves when you run into a problem and insist on getting the AI to fix it instead of doing it yourself. It is very easy to fall into this trap of trying to get AI to do everything, because our brains are hardwired to avoid effort, and so we use it even when AI is not appropriate.
The biggest time saver for me with AI is to really try to avoid the round-and-round with AI and instead just get AI to take the first pass, maybe some small follow-ups, and then I take it from there and complete the task manually. AI can be a significant time-saver in that first pass at the problem, but after that you can waste so much time trying to get AI to fix something small that you could fix yourself in 5 minutes. And this can be especially damaging because it is less effort to use AI, so we don't necessarily notice when we are wasting time due to our own cognitive biases, which I think this study does a good job of pointing out.