WEBVTT - The Great Eyeball War, Part 1 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:05.600 A day in the life of Alice. Alice works at 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:09.119 the plant. Alice has a strange pay system at her 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:13.080 job at the plant. Instead of getting weekly paychecks, every day, 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:16.599 her employer deposits one seventh of her weekly income into 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.880 her bank account. She makes what passes for an average 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:22.560 median wage in the New U s territories, so this 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:24.960 means about a hundred and twenty one credits shows up 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:28.479 in her bank account every day. It's Saturday if she's 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:31.040 off work, and she's out of food at her apartment, 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.920 so Alice decides to go to the grocery store to 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.240 buy a few things to make herself some lunch and dinner. 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:39.560 On our way walking to the store, she sees another 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:43.640 woman walking an extremely cute puppy. Alice goes up to 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.280 ask the woman if she can pet the puppy. The 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:49.680 woman says, okay, but it will cost you three credits. 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.320 Alice thinks about it for a second, then makes a 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.720 few swipes on her identipad and sends this woman the money. 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.400 She pets the puppy. Of course, she enjoys the experience 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.000 because hey, puppies are great. On the way to the store, 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.160 she stops four other dog walkers and pays them each 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.199 three credits to pet their dogs. Now, dogs are still 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.000 great when you can find them. Petting dogs is still wonderful, 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.000 but Alice notices that each time she stops to pet 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.920 a dog, she gets less happiness out of it than 0:01:18.000 --> 0:01:21.319 she did the last time. Having spent fifteen credits on dogs, 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.399 she's now down to a hundred and six credits for 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:26.679 the day. Halfway to the store, she walks past the 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:31.280 scene of an auto car accident ambulances a peacekeeper detail. 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.720 She doesn't really want to look, and she feels guilty, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.320 but she can't help it. The feeling of curiosity is 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:42.319 so overwhelming she has the irresistible urge to peek and 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.400 see if anybody got hurt, but she gets caught. An 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.640 armored peacekeeper walks up and says, ma'am, I noticed you 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:51.640 watching the scene. There's a surcharge of twenty six credits 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.280 if you want to do that. Reluctantly, Alice hands over 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:57.760 the payment and then spends a while watching the scene. 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:00.680 Now she's down to eighty credits of the day, and 0:02:00.720 --> 0:02:03.360 on top of that, she feels pretty guilty about snooping 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.520 on the wreck in the first place. On the way 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:07.840 to the store, she has more encounters like this. She 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.400 stops to watch a couple having a heated argument a 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:13.560 parking lot. They charge her forty credits to watch, and 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.560 all it does is make her feel bad. Then outside 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:20.240 the grocery store, a vendor is selling crystal lattees. She 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.440 buys one for five credits and stands there drinking it. 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.840 It is a truly delicious crystal latte, so she buys 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.800 another one, and then another one, and then three more. 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.040 By the time she's done, she is highly overcaffeinated, feels 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.400 twitchy and anxious, and has a horrible stomach ache, and 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.160 she only has fifteen credits left to buy groceries with. 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.400 This is not enough for her to make what she 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:45.840 was planning for lunch and dinner, let alone enough to 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:47.919 save what she needs each day to pay for rent 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.760 her virtual reality bill, or save for that Ganymede Mec holiday. 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:57.160 She's been dreaming of what happened Alice in this story. 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:00.640 At every stage of every part of the she was 0:03:00.720 --> 0:03:04.120 doing what she wanted to do in the moment. Nobody 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:07.080 coerced her at all, nobody forced her to do any 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.240 of that stuff, and yet everything has gone wrong. Her 0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:14.760 financial plans for the day have been completely destroyed. What happened? 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:21.440 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stup 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:30.480 dot com. Hey you, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.320 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.480 what we just read was an attempt to sketch out 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.800 an illustration of an idea that we're going to be 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.120 talking about for a couple of episodes here. This is 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:45.080 going to be the first of a two part episode 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.640 about the attention economy, the technosphere, and the war for 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.840 your eyeballs. And one of the core ideas that we're 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.280 gonna be talking about today is the idea that we 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:01.080 should start thinking about our attention, what we pay attention to, 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.160 as a finite resource that has to be invested in 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.760 things with deliberation and care in order for us to 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.600 get what we want out of life. If you think 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:14.360 back over the story we told about Alice and simply 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.560 take out the money, remove the credits from the scenario, 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:20.480 is it a day well spent? Is the story? Okay? 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.039 If you take out all the money she spent staring 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.080 at the at the wreck, at the argument, at the puppies, 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:31.480 at the Latte's um. It's still not quite right, is it. Yeah. 0:04:31.920 --> 0:04:34.640 The great thing about this little story is that we 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.240 have these sort of fun dystopian sci fi elements, but 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:43.040 at heart we have a very dystopian idea that matches 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:48.719 up with our our daily life, our daily struggles over attention. Yeah, exactly, 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:51.120 because even if you take all of the money out 0:04:51.160 --> 0:04:54.240 of the story, she wasn't spending money, but she's spending 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.640 something that cannot be replaced, which is her time and 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:02.640 what she devotes her mind to. Yeah, thinking about that 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:06.000 purchase that she wants to make, thinking about the situation 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.120 that she's a mere bystandard too. Right, It's a distraction 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.360 from whatever else it is you want to do with 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:16.240 your life. Because our attention is truly finite. It might 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:20.800 feel like an infinite and value uncoupled resource to us, right, 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:23.080 because there's just so much of it for us to give, 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.080 and we squander it so much of the time, and 0:05:26.080 --> 0:05:28.960 there's no explicit dollar value attached to it. But think 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.120 about it like this. You do work so that you 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:34.680 can get a paycheck that will number one by you 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.000 the basic necessities of survival, But then what do you 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.520 work for on top of that? It's because you want 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.200 to have money in your paycheck that will allow you 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:48.120 to spend your free time devoting your attention to things 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.920 you want. You like to spend your attention on family, 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.600 on friends, on books and movies and enjoyable meals, and 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:00.479 sports and the outdoors and meditation and how abbies and 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:05.120 personal projects and all of all of that is attentional desires. 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.200 The reason we want to have free time is because 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:10.720 we want to be able to spend our attention on 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.440 these things. And we at least subconsciously realize that we 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:18.400 only have a limited amount of attention to spend. Our attention, 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.320 quite literally is our lives. And over the next couple 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.480 of episodes, we're gonna try to offer some evidence and 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.880 make an argument that we increasingly live in a world 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:35.200 of incredibly powerful, highly evolved attention vampires that we have 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.800 thoroughly integrated into our daily lives and allowed to just 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.960 suck away our attention at a massive scale without us 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:48.119 even noticing it. Because do you ever realize that you've 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.920 been sitting there scrolling through your Facebook news feed mindlessly 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.479 for half an hour when you really meant to be 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:57.920 doing something else, Or do you ever suddenly snap, as 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:00.479 if from a trance from watching a long string of 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.680 random YouTube videos, not videos that you went to YouTube 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:08.000 specifically to watch, but videos that have been served to 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:12.400 you as related content, compulsively clicking on the next video 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.080 or allowing it to auto play, like you're just hypnotized. Yeah. Like, 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:20.240 I often have this situation where I feel like if 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.200 I were a primitive human, I would be seated and 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.960 say a clearing um, perhaps you know, next to a tree, 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.280 and I would be working on some craft. Perhaps I'm 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:34.800 I'm chipping away at what will be an arrowhead or 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:37.720 the head of a spear. And then occasionally I'll look 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.320 up from my craft and I'll look around at the 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:42.480 surrounding territory, you know, just to make sure that the 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.320 rival tribe is not attacking, that there are no predators 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:48.239 creeping up on me, and then continue with my work. 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.400 But in my day to day environment, it's not merely 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.160 the physical surroundings that I had that I gaze up 0:07:56.200 --> 0:07:58.600 from and look at. It's the all the social media 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:03.480 um aspects of my environment, like gazing over at at Facebook, 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:06.160 at Twitter, at Reddit, at at what have you, many 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:09.000 of which are tied to my job. I'm looking at 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.680 feeds for the podcast feeds for work, and yet it 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:14.760 is it is getting in the way of my my 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.920 actual job. But you often get derailed. I bet, don't 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:20.480 you Like you go to Twitter or you go to 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.440 Facebook because it's something you have to do for your job, 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:26.200 and say, I need to check the page for X, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:29.080 or I need to upload a link to why. But 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.560 then that news feeds there isn't it, Or some things 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:34.760 are scrolling in and you get kind of sucked in, 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.400 or sometimes you're not even in there for any other reason, 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.000 but you feel this kind of inexplicable tug. Do you 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:46.559 ever notice yourself getting derailed from important or interesting projects 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:52.080 they frequent unnecessary compulsion to check Twitter and see what 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.400 happened on it? Or do you ever have that feeling 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:57.280 that suddenly a whole evening is gone by and you 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:01.120 didn't really do anything productive or enjoyable. You just had 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:06.240 a long sustained session of consuming digital content without making 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:10.040 any conscious choices or decisions, and all you're left with 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:14.319 is this hollow feeling of regret. What happened to my night? Yeah? 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.520 Sometimes it's something is is nonsensical too, is just a 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:22.160 sudden need to explore the filmography of Rod Steiger or 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:23.960 something that added fact. You know, it's like it's just 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:27.080 like I wonder what his big film was, and then 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:32.160 and then going out. Yeah, like the encyclopedic rabbit holes, 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.840 going one Wikipedia link to another. That can happen too. 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:37.920 And this is what we're gonna be talking about for 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.280 these next couple of episodes. So I came across a 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:44.000 startling fact that's often cited by a technology ethicis that 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:46.160 we're gonna be talking about in these couple of episodes. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:48.800 A guy named Tristan Harris. You might have seen him 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:50.880 in the news over the past couple of years because 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.079 he's been leading this new movement. Will be discussing a 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.120 little bit. But Harris often cites the fact that the 0:09:56.200 --> 0:10:00.719 average person with the smartphone checks their phone hundred and 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:03.920 fifty times a day. Yeah, well that doesn't that doesn't 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.680 sound too far off. I I shudder to think that 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.120 could be true. But that might be true about me. 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:13.160 I don't know, but I would be scared to see 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.520 the number if somebody kept track of how often I 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:18.800 checked my phone, because it begins to feel like coming 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:21.840 up for air. It's just something that you almost do 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.240 as a reflex. You know, I'm walking down the hallway, Well, 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:29.120 nothing to do but check my social media. Yeah, if 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:31.840 that number is true, And if you're in that average 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:34.120 band and you check your phone about a hundred and 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.840 fifty times a day, think about what that does to 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:39.360 your day. Even if you only spend an average of 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:43.480 thirty seconds each time looking at your phone, that's seventy 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.720 five minutes of every day staring at your phone. But 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:50.160 we all know it's not just thirty seconds, right, Sometimes 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.240 it's thirty seconds, sometimes maybe a little bit less. Sometimes 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.080 you open the Facebook app or the Instagram app and 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.400 it turns into ten minutes, twenty minutes, or an hour. 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:03.640 Why is this happening and how is this affecting us? 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:06.440 One of the funny things about this is the fact 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.200 that we're using in this conversation the word phone. I 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:13.360 know we've had this talk before about how like one time, Robert, 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:16.400 you were like, it's not really a phone, is it? No? 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:19.240 I yeah, I have. I have gotten in the habit 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.480 of trying to refer to it as a tiny pocket 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.520 computer because it feels far more accurate than saying phone, 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.080 because phone sounds utilitarian. I have my phone in case 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.920 an important call comes through. It's a tool for getting 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:33.960 in touch with the hospital or something like. But it's not. 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:38.040 It's a tiny pocket computer full of data streams and 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:42.160 games and various social media bells and whistles and and 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:45.920 ultimately also it's just this portal for anxiety, you know, 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.520 like all the various, all sorts of bad news can 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.960 come flying through this black little screen. And yet we 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:54.840 we want to be next to it at all times, 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:57.600 you know, we we need to be there when when 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:00.920 the bad news comes to calling. We have talked about 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:02.920 how it should be called a tiny pocket computer, and 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:05.720 that would be much more accurate. But I also think 0:12:05.720 --> 0:12:09.840 people should run this experiment. Try this exercise. Anytime somebody 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.680 says a sentence about their smartphone and they're not actually 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.000 talking about like a landline telephone, if they're talking about 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:19.560 a smartphone, replace the word phone with the word god 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:23.000 and see how the sentence sounds actually. Just search Twitter 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:25.880 for some my phone statements and turned up things like 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.160 I hate going out when my God isn't fully charged, 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.559 my God died mid inst alive, It's been a big day. 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.200 High school really is a waste of time. I just 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:38.680 sit here on my God all day. Now. I wonder 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:40.720 if we could give the god a proper name like 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.440 phone Hovah or something. That would be kind of fun, 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:48.040 but no, it would more accurately represent the I mean, 0:12:48.080 --> 0:12:50.720 the the value in time and attention that we give 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:54.040 this device. I think it is not exaggerating at all 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:56.920 to say that we now have a religious level of 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.520 devotion to these personal devices that are Internet connected. We 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:04.160 consult them in a way that if we if we 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.439 were suddenly exposed to this world, if we hadn't been 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.160 eased into it over the past, you know, ten years 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.000 or whatever, if we just popped into this future and 0:13:13.000 --> 0:13:15.839 saw everybody checking their phones and staring at their phones 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:18.000 all the time, we we would think this was absurd. 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.520 We would think this was a ridiculous way to live. Yeah, 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.640 And I mean I have moments where I do snap 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.200 out of it and for a few minutes anyway, and 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.760 realize this is this is crazy that we're all pouring 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.600 ourselves into these devices all the time, and it it's 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.040 it's beyond mere convenience. And yet when people bring this 0:13:37.120 --> 0:13:39.680 up in a satirical context, I often see people making 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:42.200 this point. Everybody's staring at their phones all the time. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.160 It is treated as an indictment of the behavior of 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:50.920 people and not an indictment of the design of the technology. 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.319 If you notice that it's like, oh, all these stupid 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:56.679 people staring at their phones all the time? Yeah, wake up, 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:59.200 people are are often at times, there's there's sort of 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.520 this this this this anti youth vibe to it as well, like, yeah, 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.679 there's millennials won't stop looking at the fields. But I 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:08.760 think we all have seen enough examples to know that 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:13.880 humans of all ages are susceptible to the the the 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:16.960 sirens song of the smartphone. Right later in this pair 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:18.960 of episodes, we're going to be discussing a lot of 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:23.560 the specific ways that our technologies that are personal devices 0:14:23.600 --> 0:14:29.040 and the apps within them are absolutely totally designed to 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:32.840 hijack our attention and make us behave this way. I 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:35.680 think it's not because people are stupid, it's not because 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.800 they're weak. It's how we are. We have certain vulnerabilities 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:43.080 in our brains, and these devices and the software within 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:48.040 them exploit those vulnerabilities brilliantly. Yeah, we have just we 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:54.040 have crafted an ever evolving neural parasite that we all 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:56.360 pay top dollar for. I want to discuss a couple 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:59.960 of findings about the effects of having of like phone 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.400 and interruptions, the interruptions they provide on our attention, and 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:05.320 the way this happens in our lives. Before we dig 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:08.520 more into the meat to the topic. Just in, Robert, 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:09.960 I think you might have seen the study. I think 0:15:10.000 --> 0:15:12.320 maybe we talked about it. There was research out of 0:15:12.400 --> 0:15:15.280 u T. Austin just last year in that found something 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:20.600 pretty weird. People who had their smartphone within reach did 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.440 worse on tests of cognitive performance than people who had 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.560 it in another room. This is even if the smartphone 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:33.040 was turned off. If it's visible or within an arm's length, 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.480 it was distracting enough to deduct from our effective I 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:41.000 Q and I have anecdotally noticed this in my own life. 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.240 I'll be working and having trouble focusing on work, even 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.120 if I'm not actually checking my phone, I will be 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:49.720 in a more distracted state of mind if I've got 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:52.280 my phone on me, And if I merely take my 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.040 phone to a different room of the house and shut 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:57.680 the door and then go back to my work, I 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.680 can focus more. I'm serious. I have found this as well. 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:03.640 If I can stick it in a drawer now, as 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:05.800 as I am saying, this as I am speaking into 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.240 the microphone. My phone is situated over here to the side. 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:11.280 I have it an airplane mode so that it won't 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.400 interrupt me. But still it's there in my peripheral vision, 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.000 like kind of staring at me with its with its 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.520 dark screen, and there's this this sense that's still this 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.440 is this idea that it might light up at any moment, 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:26.160 I might get some sort of an alert, even though 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:27.680 it should not be able to give it to me, 0:16:27.760 --> 0:16:30.720 right yeah, even though it's not doing anything to you, 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.280 it's in your It's in your consciousness at some level. 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:37.920 Right in the same way that somebody's god belief becomes 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:41.600 a part of their conscience, the presence of your phone 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.840 becomes a part of your situational awareness. It's always lingering there. 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:50.080 It's always a potential, right yeah. And sometimes the potential 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.000 is just for mundane stuff to happen, like, oh, the 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.800 doorbell will ring at my house. That means a package 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:57.800 has been delivered, you know, and it's just I don't 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:01.360 need that information. It's just you know, a box of 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:03.960 of cat food. I don't need to be there, and 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:06.720 no additional plans need to be made. But yet the 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.960 delivery of cat food has interrupted my daily workflow. Yeah. 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.480 The English psychologist Glen Daniel Wilson I've read, has shown 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.679 that the distraction threat of things in the digital realm, 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:21.760 So like the example would be an unread message sitting 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.160 in your inbox, you're aware of that, and you've got 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.199 that distraction threat on your mind. It can lower our 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.680 effective i Q by about ten points. But then think 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.880 about what happens when you actually have the distractions coming in, 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.000 Like if you've got notifications turned on on your phone. 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:41.479 Interruptions matter a lot to your ability to focus on 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:45.520 projects and activities you care about. When a notification interrupts you, 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.040 it's not just the time you spend looking at the 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:53.400 interruption that you lose. Interruptions degrade the quality of your 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:57.000 focus on your primary activity. Some psychologists call this quote 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:01.359 a task shifting penalty. Robert, I'm sure you've felt this before, right, 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.640 I feel this all the time. Yeah. You get into 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:06.920 a certain workflow and then something pops you out of it, right, 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.600 and that's and that's when, or if you actually get 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.240 back into the task at all. According to a two 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.880 thousand five University of California, Irvine study by Gloria Mark 0:18:16.920 --> 0:18:20.520 and colleagues. Regaining your original focus on a project or 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:24.960 task after an interruption takes people, on average over twenty 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:28.600 five minutes. And if that's they actually resume the task 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.520 on the same day they were interrupted. Sometimes they don't 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.520 resume it for the whole day. So what happens when 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.680 you get when you're working on something or you're focusing 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.320 on something, is if you're gonna get interrupted, it takes 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.760 you longer to get back into the zone. And that's 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.800 if you even pick the task back up, and sometimes 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.720 it will take you a while to do that. Interruptions 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:52.000 are more than just the content of the interruption. They 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.680 totally degrade the quality of our engagement with every goal 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.159 pursuit we care about. You know, this reminds me of 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:00.879 some some research I was putting in on another topic 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:05.280 where an individual touched on the nature of torture and 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:09.480 one of the psychological aspects of torture is making the 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:13.959 torture recipient unsure about what is going to happen at 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.280 any given time. And this is a power that we 0:19:17.520 --> 0:19:20.400 have handed not only over to the torture but also 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.600 to the smartphone and various other devices in our life. Well, yeah, 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.080 we were just recently reading some stuff about pain and 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.800 the role that that uncertainty and anxiety plays in the 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:34.680 amplification of the sensation of pain. So anyway, given all 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.840 of this, I have to start wondering in a quite 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.000 literal sense. I I don't mean this as an exaggeration. 0:19:41.440 --> 0:19:45.679 Are we currently living in an attention dystopia? All right? 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.399 You think about that while we take a quick break, 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.760 and then we'll come back and try to regain focus. 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.840 Than alright, we're back now. I think we should think 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:59.080 about the idea of attention. We've already discussed that attention 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:03.080 essential is our lives. Attention is what we value in 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.640 our lives. When you think about the life you want 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:08.159 to live, what you really mean is you want to 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.680 be able to spend your attention on certain things, right, Yeah, 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:15.639 Because I mean when you start thinking about what attention is, 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:18.760 it's more than just looking at something or thinking about 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.000 something momentarily. It is Uh, it's it's crucial to what 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.000 I've seen referred to as the selective directedness of our 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:28.480 mental lives, right, having a having a will for how 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:30.879 you use your mind. Yeah, I mean, in some models 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.000 of consciousness that we've discussed on the show even center 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:37.320 on the manner in which humans utilize their attentive powers. 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:41.600 As such, there are multiple philosophical arguments for the nature 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:44.640 of human attention and the reasons for our limited process 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.720 and capability. Yeah, but ultimately it's kind of like the 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.000 primitive example I gave earlier. You know, there's no doubt 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.920 that we evolve to handle various streams of stimuli at 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.919 once and to apply selective attention based on their importance. 0:20:57.440 --> 0:20:59.560 This is why we can go to a party and 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:02.280 you can tune out all the other voices in the 0:21:02.320 --> 0:21:05.080 party except for the person you're talking to, or that 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:07.480 you can do the exact opposite, tune out the person 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:09.879 you're supposed to be talking to and listen to a 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.840 more interesting conversation in the vicinity. But one thing you'll 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.880 notice if you do that is it really degrades what 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.399 you take away from any of those experiences. That's so 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:21.840 like if you were trying to talk to one person 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:24.480 in a crowded room, you can focus on them and 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:27.040 pay attention to them, But if you're trying to switch 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:31.200 between paying attention to them and eavesdropping on somebody nearby, 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:33.520 you're not really going to get a very good sense 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:36.320 of either one, right, But still there are limits to 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:38.560 what you can encounter in a like a physical real 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:43.080 world scenario. You know, even if the tribal meeting is 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:45.600 is rather crowded, there's only so much you're gonna be 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:47.320 able to hear over the shouting and of course the 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:52.040 sacrifices to to ug uh you know, I mean, it's uh, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.919 there are going to be limits in place. There's the 0:21:54.960 --> 0:21:58.360 world of multiple stimuli streams and fixed and moving objects 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:00.760 that we evolve to thrive in, and then there's this 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:04.520 world we've made a place of over stimulation, over choice 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.520 in myriad voices to command our psyche. This is a 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:11.199