7 ms·

Protecting my attention at the dopamine carnival

202 points by overload119 1y ago

jimbob45 1y ago
I can’t abide by that last claim. AI has been able to fetch some dead Microsoft documentation for me that I was not able to otherwise find through the regular channels. The code would have had to have looked very differently if not for AI.
- robotic 1y ago
  Mixed bag for me. I spent a day running in circles working on a github action based on lots of very bad info from chatGPT. I also just reviewed a PR that allowed for remote function execution. The dev that wrote the code has been very open about their use of AI. He thought it was good because he wasnt thinking.
- hattmall 1y ago
  Internet archive is pretty good for old documentation. It's very interesting what API features that are removed from new versions and all documentation scrubbed but actually still work.
- munchler 1y ago
  I agree. AI doesn't make me a faster coder, but it helps me do things that I wouldn't have been able to do at all otherwise.
bcoates 1y ago
The idea of app timers seems like exactly the weird self-negotiation alcoholics do around booze where they think mimicking the habits of casual drinkers (on what is, to the casual, a bender) will make them not an alcoholic anymore. 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.
- pipsterwo 1y ago
  I find them really useful, I find youtube to be a good thing in moderation. But its very helpful to have a timer forcing me to thoughtfully use the time I've allocated.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    The "UnTrap"-Add-On for Firefox can block the more detrimental aspects of youtube, like shorts or the recommendation of other videos. I have it configured so that it always brings me directly to the "watch later"-playlist and I never go to the main page.
    - Esophagus4 1y ago
      FreeTube is also phenomenal for de-enshittifying (dis-enshittifying?) the YouTube experience
- mingus88 1y ago
  I get what you are saying but it’s 2025 and a mobile device is basically required to operate in society today. Especially if you want an active social life or to excel at work. 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.
  - hattmall 1y ago
    Well he didn't say the phone, but the app. So instead of using app timers just delete the app. The point is that you find yourself having a problem with the app and regret it's usage later then an app timer is the same as an alcoholic having one drink, now if you are judicious with the app timer and really do it ok. Same for an alcoholic, if you can actually have one drink, then it's fine. 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.
fnord77 1y ago
> 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. this contradicts thought leaders in the field like Andrew Ng
- unclad5968 1y ago
  What is a thought leader?
  - leakycap 1y ago
    The person you are asking gave an example: > 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.
  - _9ptr 1y ago
    A Führer for your thoughts
    - lbrito 1y ago
      Thought Czar is more in vogue
  - lubujackson 1y ago
    PR speak for marketer
- sothatsit 1y ago
  This is a stat from a pretty interesting study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522772 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.
androng 1y ago
I invested in META stock because I have an addiction to instagram and the tracking is so good that the ads are actually tailored to me and my desires so my CTR is i think 7% on average. contrast with YouTube and Google and Twitter where I block all the ads because the CTR is 0.00% because they are all garbage. Instagram keeps showing me ads for expensive stuff I don't need but I do want, like meal kits and fancy clothes
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- milofeynman 1y ago
  I've found the same. I actually enjoy Instagram ads. I despise almost every other ad I can think of.
  - parpfish 1y ago
    You enjoy the ads, but do you enjoy the products? 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.
    - ch4s3 1y ago
      The joke is that Instagram is QVC for millennials, it must be working on/for some people.
    - spondylosaurus 1y ago
      There's a particular Instagram ad my wife always sees for a graphic tee with a design that we both love, but the vendor selling it is (according to Reddit reviews) garbage. The infuriating thing is that no one else seems to sell a shirt with that particular design!
androng 1y ago
I think I can obtain a triple benefit by using Cursor "ask" mode instead of "agent" mode. 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.
- gs17 1y ago
  The biggest benefit to me (using Copilot instead of Cursor) is that you can make sure that it understands the problem and the solution is what you expected. If I want to see if it can make a big change, I usually flow through "I need X, what are our options" -> "Discuss option N more" -> "Ok, now you can do it".
- brailsafe 1y ago
  > 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.
  - useabilitys 1y ago
    [dead]
jampa 1y ago
> Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. 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.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Most MFA solutions can use a FIDO token these days (unless the admins are masochists), which you could keep plugged into your device
  - jampa 1y ago
    Most banking apps here only allow their own app as a 2-factor authentication, not even TOTP is allowed. (I think they make it to increase user engagement.) 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.
- satvikpendem 1y ago
  This might defeat the purpose of MFA but I use an authenticator like Ente that works on the desktop and syncs to and from your phone.
  - cik 1y ago
    Thank you, I really appreciate this. I've been looking for something exactly like this for ages, whilst trying to toss my current solution.
    - 1y ago
padolsey 1y ago
> 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. 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'.
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Im never surprised when someone prattling on about dopamine also leans on a bad study to make a spurious point.
  - padolsey 1y ago
    Yep it's always a bit cute and funny, when you consider the absolute necessity of dopamine in basically every functionally relevant neural activation. Talk to a parkinson's patient about your 'dopamine=bad' fluff. Ugh. They may as well just have titled it "Protecting My Attention At The {Insert Arbitrary Hormone or Neurotransmission Chemical} Carnival"....
    - bigiain 1y ago
      > They may as well just have titled it "Protecting My Attention At The {Insert Arbitrary Hormone or Neurotransmission Chemical} Carnival".... 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.
      - padolsey 1y ago
        Ofc the title got its point across, but I'd argue to hold ourselves to higher standards of veracity. That's all.
crtified 1y ago
The exact mechanisms will be individual to the person. 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.
fennec-posix 1y ago
If you work in a SCIF you don't have to worry about your phone being a distraction
- normie3000 1y ago
  Great point. So how do you do 2FA? Hardware tokens?
  - fennec-posix 1y ago
    Smart Cards
mortsnort 1y ago
Tik Tok is obvious brain rot, but what if one's time at the dopamine carnival is spent consuming "brain-growth" content? Phones essentially put all human knowledge at our fingertips, where is the line of diminishing or negative returns when trying to consume it?
- spaqin 1y ago
  Popular science videos is still filler; I'd be inclined agree if you were scrolling MIT lectures (and watching them in their entirety), but how much of actual knowledge (and not random tidbits) do you retain from short form videos?
  - mortsnort 1y ago
    Where is popular science videos coming from? Blogs, Wikipedia, research papers, Substacks, newspapers, magazines, ChatGPT, etc.
    - satyrun 1y ago
      I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a short form video in conveying information but what information in this context can be compressed down to fit? How much can you really learn from even a 30 second Feynman lecture?
- YuukiRey 1y ago
  99% of the time it is consumption without ever utilizing the knowledge for any creative endeavor . And without application the knowledge will quickly fade and you’ll find yourself watching the same 10min video on statistics 101 for the 3rd time, because you keep forgetting. 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, …)
  - cgriswald 1y ago
    Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to the type of video. As a writer of fiction, even a 'mindless' video made for entertainment can send my mind reeling through possibilities, relationships, and connections I'd never thought about before, but I think that's just a quibble over wording. 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?
SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
> 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. 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.
specproc 1y ago
Had my phone left uncharged for the best part of a week recently. Barely needed it. It's my laptop that eats my brain.
wzdd 1y ago
The "surprising results" are a bit factoid-ey and if taken at face value are far more shocking than they turned out to be (I very much appreciate the references so I could check this): "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.
- senko 1y ago
  > Basically your brain doesn't have to work as hard at the task if you're using an LLM 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!"
blotfaba 1y ago
> 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. 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.
superkuh 1y ago
It's really hard to take any of his claims seriously when the article title itself is leading with 1960s old wives tales about dopamine neurochemistry.
rglover 1y ago
My wife and I have been talking about noticing the general cognitive decline in people we interact with. We both started to notice that people have been getting a little bit...goofy (spacing out, not really reciprocating communication, hyper-limited attention spans, etc). 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.
- QuantumGood 1y ago
  You say "people", any filters? Young/old, working/not working. I notice changes in each new generation that are at least cognitive adjacent.
  - jay_kyburz 1y ago
    My partner was telling me about the Gen Z stare last night. Apparently when you try and talk to them in the workplace they don't know how to respond so they will just stare back at you.
    - Traubenfuchs 1y ago
      And you know what your partner telling you about the gen-z stare story means? 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.
      - jay_kyburz 1y ago
        And here I am bubbling it up to the nerdiest social media of all! :)
  - rglover 1y ago
    All ages for both of us (I'm OP). All spans of economic status (poor, middle, rich—doesn't matter).
- 1y ago
anothereng 1y ago
everyone's becoming an addict. Few people will avoid digital addiction
devmor 1y ago
> I don’t rely on “willpower” or “discipline” - I try to design each day with intention 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.
- pirates 1y ago
  Is this an ADHD coping strategy? I’m not trying to second guess, I’m actually very intrigued because the way you described your thought process is very similar to mine, but I’ve never been tested or diagnosed. In any case thanks, this will help me in the future I think.
  - devmor 1y ago
ladino 1y ago
a gamechanger for me was to set my device to grey: https://trendscout.com/gogrey/ https://trendscout.com/gogrey/
Uehreka 1y ago
> They call it centaur guardrails because it’s AI on the bottom, human on the top. Nice. Did you just define a term, act like it already existed, then compliment yourself for coming up with it?
- overload119 1y ago
  It was directly from the study that I had linked. I was complimenting them.
layer8 1y ago
> I stumbled on this elegant [lockable] box you put phones into and it blocks all radio communications. 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.
darqis 1y ago
Man, instead of going to some discord channel, asking waiting for some human to respond, if they do, then potentially misunderstand the question, maybe even cause drama, or using a search engine to crawl, tediously through SO and Reddit posts, because Google favors those 2, or wading through pages of potentially badly written documentation, I just turn on github and ask copilot. And it responds in most cases, and I can even chat with it ask for alternatives or better approaches to my problems. 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
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  Used to be if you needed a logo you wrote it on a napkin. Just quick simple creativity. I imagine limiting opportunities to engage in that lead to future opportunities to engage in that feeling like too high a friction cost. Like falling out of the habit of working out.
_rpxpx 1y ago
Articles like this always start with such radical criticism, and end with such dismally modest proposals: "try not to look at your phone for 1 hour after you wake up", "before you pick up your phone, try counting to 100 first", "move 'instagram' away from your homescreen", etc. What about just getting rid of your smartphone? Who really needs anything beyond calls and text messages...? You can get a GPS map, and a camera. Complete freedom is right there for the taking.
mrbluecoat 1y ago
> I stumbled on this elegant box you put phones into and it blocks all radio communications. $249 for a Faraday cage? You can find $10 Faraday bags on Amazon..
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
$249 for an airplane mode box??? Gonna have to run some tricksy ads to sell that thing.
catchcatchcatch 1y ago
[dead]
constantcrying 1y ago
>Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. >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.
ozgrakkurt 1y ago
Recently tried using chronometer while working and found it very very painful. 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

202 points by overload119 1y ago

I can’t abide by that last claim. AI has been able to fetch some dead Microsoft documentation for me that I was not able to otherwise find through the regular channels. The code would have had to have looked very differently if not for AI.

robotic 1y ago
Mixed bag for me. I spent a day running in circles working on a github action based on lots of very bad info from chatGPT. I also just reviewed a PR that allowed for remote function execution. The dev that wrote the code has been very open about their use of AI. He thought it was good because he wasnt thinking.
hattmall 1y ago
Internet archive is pretty good for old documentation. It's very interesting what API features that are removed from new versions and all documentation scrubbed but actually still work.
munchler 1y ago
I agree. AI doesn't make me a faster coder, but it helps me do things that I wouldn't have been able to do at all otherwise.

bcoates 1y ago

The idea of app timers seems like exactly the weird self-negotiation alcoholics do around booze where they think mimicking the habits of casual drinkers (on what is, to the casual, a bender) will make them not an alcoholic anymore. 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.

pipsterwo 1y ago
I find them really useful, I find youtube to be a good thing in moderation. But its very helpful to have a timer forcing me to thoughtfully use the time I've allocated.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  The "UnTrap"-Add-On for Firefox can block the more detrimental aspects of youtube, like shorts or the recommendation of other videos. I have it configured so that it always brings me directly to the "watch later"-playlist and I never go to the main page.
  - Esophagus4 1y ago
    FreeTube is also phenomenal for de-enshittifying (dis-enshittifying?) the YouTube experience
mingus88 1y ago
I get what you are saying but it’s 2025 and a mobile device is basically required to operate in society today. Especially if you want an active social life or to excel at work. 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.
- hattmall 1y ago
  Well he didn't say the phone, but the app. So instead of using app timers just delete the app. The point is that you find yourself having a problem with the app and regret it's usage later then an app timer is the same as an alcoholic having one drink, now if you are judicious with the app timer and really do it ok. Same for an alcoholic, if you can actually have one drink, then it's fine. 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.

fnord77 1y ago

> 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. this contradicts thought leaders in the field like Andrew Ng

unclad5968 1y ago
What is a thought leader?
- leakycap 1y ago
  The person you are asking gave an example: > 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.
- _9ptr 1y ago
  A Führer for your thoughts
  - lbrito 1y ago
    Thought Czar is more in vogue
- lubujackson 1y ago
  PR speak for marketer
sothatsit 1y ago
This is a stat from a pretty interesting study: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522772 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.

androng 1y ago

I invested in META stock because I have an addiction to instagram and the tracking is so good that the ads are actually tailored to me and my desires so my CTR is i think 7% on average. contrast with YouTube and Google and Twitter where I block all the ads because the CTR is 0.00% because they are all garbage. Instagram keeps showing me ads for expensive stuff I don't need but I do want, like meal kits and fancy clothes

deleted 1y ago
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milofeynman 1y ago
I've found the same. I actually enjoy Instagram ads. I despise almost every other ad I can think of.
- parpfish 1y ago
  You enjoy the ads, but do you enjoy the products? 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.
  - ch4s3 1y ago
    The joke is that Instagram is QVC for millennials, it must be working on/for some people.
  - spondylosaurus 1y ago
    There's a particular Instagram ad my wife always sees for a graphic tee with a design that we both love, but the vendor selling it is (according to Reddit reviews) garbage. The infuriating thing is that no one else seems to sell a shirt with that particular design!

androng 1y ago

I think I can obtain a triple benefit by using Cursor "ask" mode instead of "agent" mode. 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.

gs17 1y ago
The biggest benefit to me (using Copilot instead of Cursor) is that you can make sure that it understands the problem and the solution is what you expected. If I want to see if it can make a big change, I usually flow through "I need X, what are our options" -> "Discuss option N more" -> "Ok, now you can do it".
brailsafe 1y ago
> 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.
- useabilitys 1y ago
  [dead]

jampa 1y ago

> Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. 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.

candiddevmike 1y ago
Most MFA solutions can use a FIDO token these days (unless the admins are masochists), which you could keep plugged into your device
- jampa 1y ago
  Most banking apps here only allow their own app as a 2-factor authentication, not even TOTP is allowed. (I think they make it to increase user engagement.) 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.
satvikpendem 1y ago
This might defeat the purpose of MFA but I use an authenticator like Ente that works on the desktop and syncs to and from your phone.
- cik 1y ago
  Thank you, I really appreciate this. I've been looking for something exactly like this for ages, whilst trying to toss my current solution.
  - 1y ago

padolsey 1y ago

> 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. 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'.

ch4s3 1y ago
Im never surprised when someone prattling on about dopamine also leans on a bad study to make a spurious point.
- padolsey 1y ago
  Yep it's always a bit cute and funny, when you consider the absolute necessity of dopamine in basically every functionally relevant neural activation. Talk to a parkinson's patient about your 'dopamine=bad' fluff. Ugh. They may as well just have titled it "Protecting My Attention At The {Insert Arbitrary Hormone or Neurotransmission Chemical} Carnival"....
  - bigiain 1y ago
    > They may as well just have titled it "Protecting My Attention At The {Insert Arbitrary Hormone or Neurotransmission Chemical} Carnival".... 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.
    - padolsey 1y ago
      Ofc the title got its point across, but I'd argue to hold ourselves to higher standards of veracity. That's all.

crtified 1y ago

The exact mechanisms will be individual to the person. 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.

fennec-posix 1y ago

If you work in a SCIF you don't have to worry about your phone being a distraction

normie3000 1y ago
Great point. So how do you do 2FA? Hardware tokens?
- fennec-posix 1y ago
  Smart Cards

mortsnort 1y ago

Tik Tok is obvious brain rot, but what if one's time at the dopamine carnival is spent consuming "brain-growth" content? Phones essentially put all human knowledge at our fingertips, where is the line of diminishing or negative returns when trying to consume it?

spaqin 1y ago
Popular science videos is still filler; I'd be inclined agree if you were scrolling MIT lectures (and watching them in their entirety), but how much of actual knowledge (and not random tidbits) do you retain from short form videos?
- mortsnort 1y ago
  Where is popular science videos coming from? Blogs, Wikipedia, research papers, Substacks, newspapers, magazines, ChatGPT, etc.
  - satyrun 1y ago
    I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a short form video in conveying information but what information in this context can be compressed down to fit? How much can you really learn from even a 30 second Feynman lecture?
YuukiRey 1y ago
99% of the time it is consumption without ever utilizing the knowledge for any creative endeavor . And without application the knowledge will quickly fade and you’ll find yourself watching the same 10min video on statistics 101 for the 3rd time, because you keep forgetting. 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, …)
- cgriswald 1y ago
  Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to the type of video. As a writer of fiction, even a 'mindless' video made for entertainment can send my mind reeling through possibilities, relationships, and connections I'd never thought about before, but I think that's just a quibble over wording. 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?

SV_BubbleTime 1y ago

> 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. 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.

specproc 1y ago

Had my phone left uncharged for the best part of a week recently. Barely needed it. It's my laptop that eats my brain.

wzdd 1y ago

The "surprising results" are a bit factoid-ey and if taken at face value are far more shocking than they turned out to be (I very much appreciate the references so I could check this): "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.

senko 1y ago
> Basically your brain doesn't have to work as hard at the task if you're using an LLM 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!"

blotfaba 1y ago

> 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. 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.

superkuh 1y ago

It's really hard to take any of his claims seriously when the article title itself is leading with 1960s old wives tales about dopamine neurochemistry.

rglover 1y ago

My wife and I have been talking about noticing the general cognitive decline in people we interact with. We both started to notice that people have been getting a little bit...goofy (spacing out, not really reciprocating communication, hyper-limited attention spans, etc). 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.

QuantumGood 1y ago
You say "people", any filters? Young/old, working/not working. I notice changes in each new generation that are at least cognitive adjacent.
- jay_kyburz 1y ago
  My partner was telling me about the Gen Z stare last night. Apparently when you try and talk to them in the workplace they don't know how to respond so they will just stare back at you.
  - Traubenfuchs 1y ago
    And you know what your partner telling you about the gen-z stare story means? 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.
    - jay_kyburz 1y ago
      And here I am bubbling it up to the nerdiest social media of all! :)
- rglover 1y ago
  All ages for both of us (I'm OP). All spans of economic status (poor, middle, rich—doesn't matter).
1y ago

anothereng 1y ago

everyone's becoming an addict. Few people will avoid digital addiction

devmor 1y ago

> I don’t rely on “willpower” or “discipline” - I try to design each day with intention 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.

pirates 1y ago
Is this an ADHD coping strategy? I’m not trying to second guess, I’m actually very intrigued because the way you described your thought process is very similar to mine, but I’ve never been tested or diagnosed. In any case thanks, this will help me in the future I think.
- devmor 1y ago

ladino 1y ago

a gamechanger for me was to set my device to grey: https://trendscout.com/gogrey/ https://trendscout.com/gogrey/

Uehreka 1y ago

> They call it centaur guardrails because it’s AI on the bottom, human on the top. Nice. Did you just define a term, act like it already existed, then compliment yourself for coming up with it?

overload119 1y ago
It was directly from the study that I had linked. I was complimenting them.

layer8 1y ago

> I stumbled on this elegant [lockable] box you put phones into and it blocks all radio communications. 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.

darqis 1y ago

Man, instead of going to some discord channel, asking waiting for some human to respond, if they do, then potentially misunderstand the question, maybe even cause drama, or using a search engine to crawl, tediously through SO and Reddit posts, because Google favors those 2, or wading through pages of potentially badly written documentation, I just turn on github and ask copilot. And it responds in most cases, and I can even chat with it ask for alternatives or better approaches to my problems. 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

kjkjadksj 1y ago
Used to be if you needed a logo you wrote it on a napkin. Just quick simple creativity. I imagine limiting opportunities to engage in that lead to future opportunities to engage in that feeling like too high a friction cost. Like falling out of the habit of working out.

_rpxpx 1y ago

Articles like this always start with such radical criticism, and end with such dismally modest proposals: "try not to look at your phone for 1 hour after you wake up", "before you pick up your phone, try counting to 100 first", "move 'instagram' away from your homescreen", etc. What about just getting rid of your smartphone? Who really needs anything beyond calls and text messages...? You can get a GPS map, and a camera. Complete freedom is right there for the taking.

mrbluecoat 1y ago

> I stumbled on this elegant box you put phones into and it blocks all radio communications. $249 for a Faraday cage? You can find $10 Faraday bags on Amazon..

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

$249 for an airplane mode box??? Gonna have to run some tricksy ads to sell that thing.

catchcatchcatch 1y ago

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constantcrying 1y ago

>Having your phone in the same room while doing cognitive work reliably drops your memory, attention, and overall cognitive performance. >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.

ozgrakkurt 1y ago

Recently tried using chronometer while working and found it very very painful. 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