Heavy multitaskers have reduced memory

People who frequently engage with multiple types of media at once performed worse on simple memory tasks, according to the last decade of research. However, it’s still too soon to determine cause and effect, says psychology Professor Anthony Wagner.

Cognitive Offloading

If you have ever tilted your head to perceive a rotated image, or programmed a smartphone to remind you of an upcoming appointment, you have engaged in cognitive offloading: the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand. Despite the ubiquity of this type of behavior, it has only recently become the target of systematic investigation in and of itself. We review research from several domains that focuses on two main questions: (i) what mechanisms trigger cognitive offloading, and (ii) what are the cognitive consequences of this behavior? We offer a novel metacognitive framework that integrates results from diverse domains and suggests avenues for future research.

Matt Darling (@besttrousers)

“Darling’s thesis is the first compelling explanation I’ve seen for the vibecession…What surprises me, though, is how comparatively little attention this theory has gotten”. I am being silenced.

The Emergent Self Loop

Nearly once a week I receive an email from a different stranger.

Pixels Filling Squares

Watch pixels slowly filling squares, for the third time now!

AI Use at Work Is Causing “Brain Fry,” Researchers Find, Especially Among High Performers

The increased speed and multitasking that AI allows at work is leading to many workers experiencing "brain fry," a new study found.

The Waluigi Effect (mega-post) — LessWrong

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. — Carl Jung …

Dark Patterns Won - Ron Bronson

Many moons ago, I used to post a lot on Twitter about so-called deceptive design/dark patterns that proliferate consumer UIs. There were sites

What Is Bluesky?—A Landscape Revealed by the Diffusion Experiment - Nightflight

Is the Memory Shortage Intentional? | Contrary Research

A deep dive from Contrary Research.

This Is Your Brain on Podcasts (Published 2016)

Different people’s brains absorb a compelling story in the roughly the same complicated pattern, using many parts of the brain, researchers found.

Skircle - Bluesky Interaction Circles

Create Bluesky Interaction Circles with ease!

Spurious Correlations

For his Spurious Correlations project, Tyler Vigen compares data sets that are the very definition of “correlation is not causation”. For instance, the number o

Science Banana on Twitter / X

I don't even know where to start with this crap (partly because it's hard to tell which of the studies the 17 "jogging" effects came from, partly because it seems obvious from the paper that the more studies the more the "effect" disappears) https://t.co/Gniv5Ht8g3 pic.twitter.com/qbToQ2yOGM— Science Banana (@literalbanana) March 12, 2024