The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
"The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
to Combine"
<....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
[an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
world's population?
You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> to Combine"
> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> world's population?
> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly.
It can be dangerous when people try to push the envelope and bite off more than they can chew simultaneously. We are supposed to attend to salient inputs and it is advantageous to filter out the extraneous. When we subjectively prioritize the cellphone conversation input to the dtriment of the input from traffic...well you figure it out.
> I can
> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
Our tasking abilities are limited by the ability to process information. Multitasking means a rapid flit between tasks serially and can lead to not doing either properly if you must put too much cognitive effort into them (though rote subconscious routines like walking could be done while attending to something requiring more effort like listening to an audiobook).
Some people might be able to flit more quickly in a serial manner and make it seem they can do two things in true parallel. But using a computer analogy, if you bog down the RAM with too much and/or the processor is slow, two elaborate and memory consuming tasks (like Powerpoint animation and instant messaging with video) could freeze the system. The swapping to and fro from RAM might start causing the hard drive to thrash, which is like your adrenaline and cortisol going through the roof and the stress causes malfunction. Or a deadlock state might occur when tasks compete and get to a point where they torpedo one another.
> By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
> hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
> would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
> end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
> nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
You could have provided a link to the full article:
The focus of the majority of the article was on the problems with multi-tasking and "inattentional blindness" and she referenced the "invisible gorilla experiment"
As for "super-taskers" it appears rare ~2.5%. A sub-group could co-exist in a population alongside a majority without this strength. The author mentioned this as an aside to the larger gist of the article.
[quote]The authors of the study suggest that there may be a set of biological, genetic and perhaps behavioral factors that contribute to efficient multitasking, and that maybe some of these factors can even be learned to make the rest of us better at doing two things at once.[/quote]
It's possible that multitasking is a learned capacity, yet some people could be blessed with a genetic predisposition for this that facilitates it. And it is not necessarily the case that the ability for directly selected for if it were genetic. It could be a byproduct of something else entirely.
And from the second page of the Time.com article:
[quote]Bavelier studies the effect of action-video-game playing on people's ability to split attention and multitask. In her work, she has found that people who devote five hours or more per week to such action games for a year show the same heightened performance abilities as Watson and Strayer's supertaskers.[/quote]
On Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:25:20 AM UTC+10, prawnster wrote:
> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> to Combine"
> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> world's population?
Pity there isn't more detail about what kind of tasks the 2.5% are superly good. I don't know, but I suspect they are just super at the kind of automatic multi-tasking that most of us do just a little bit well. In any case, your argument assumes its conclusion - first prove that multi-tasking is adaptive.
> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
Read for comprehension. Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But if you are trying to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time, you are likely to do neither very well. You are likely to have your haploids culled, either by predation or barbecue, which is pretty much the definition of non-adaptive behaviour.
> By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
> hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
> would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
> end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
> nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
Perhaps the answer is in the part of the article you left out:
"Clearly, it is easier to combine some tasks than others. "Not all distractions are the same," says Dr. Strayer. Things like knitting, cleaning and working out can be done automatically while the mind is engaged elsewhere. But doing homework and texting simultaneously isn't possible. (Sorry, kids)."
In any case, nothing you posted supports a contention that multi-tasking is, in fact, adaptive. I suspect that is because the term "multi-tasking" is so ill-defined as to be largely untestable for adaptivity.
On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:25:20 -0700 (PDT), prawnster
<zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
>The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
>or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
>really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
>fishwrap.
Well, you know how it goes. The WSJ is such a well-known mouthpiece
for liberalist socialist communist atheist islamist evolutionist
propaganda.
>"The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
>to Combine"
><....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
>underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
>are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
>a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
>buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
>push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
>consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
>times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
>....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
>[an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
>than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
>multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
>two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
So, to paraphrase, the article says most of our brains are wired for
selective attention, which helps us to filter out some distractions,
but we are trying to push our brains into multitasking, and most
people are really just switching attention among multiple tasks, which
is not the same as actual concurrent, parallel processing, which only
about 2.5% of people seem to do.
So far, interesting but nothing very revolutionary there, comrade.
>So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
>adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
>multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
>people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
>now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
>world's population?
So, to paraphrase, you assume multitasking is adaptalicious (your
paste doesn't say or imply that) and so assume evolution must
necessarily spread this advantage to the majority of the population
(your paste doesn't say or imply that either).
you have no basis for making either assumption. What are the specific
tasks that are necessary to multitask? Your paste mentions using cell
phones while driving. How long has the human race needed to do that?
Ever? Generally, even if modern life has made multitasking
adaptalicious, which is arguable, that advantage hasn't been around
long enough for evolution to have much time to spread it around. We're
still working on bad backs and wisdom teeth. Be patient.
>You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
>explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
>helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
>notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
>think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
>can think of no downside to it.
That's why it's called arguing from personal ignorance. Multitasking
requires sophisticated process control and redundant hardware. The
human brain already accounts for about 25% of our rest metabolism.
Adding more power will make the brain even more metabolically
expensive, and more difficult to keep cool. Perhaps our head will
have to get bigger, too. Imagine the expense of replacing all those
hats.
> Your move, Darwinistas.
>By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
>hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
>would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
>end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
>nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
I see no contradictions in your paste. Your analysis is, OTOH, is
quite contrary.
> On Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:25:20 AM UTC+10, prawnster wrote:
>> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
>> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
>> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
>> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
>> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
>> to Combine"
>> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
>> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
>> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
>> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
>> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
>> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
>> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
>> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
>> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
>> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
>> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
>> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
>> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
>> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
>> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
>> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
>> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
>> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
>> world's population?
> Pity there isn't more detail about what kind of tasks the 2.5% are superly good. I don't know, but I suspect they are just super at the kind of automatic multi-tasking that most of us do just a little bit well. In any case, your argument assumes its conclusion - first prove that multi-tasking is adaptive.
>> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
>> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
>> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
>> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
>> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
>> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
> Read for comprehension. Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But if you are trying to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time, you are likely to do neither very well. You are likely to have your haploids culled, either by predation or barbecue, which is pretty much the definition of non-adaptive behaviour.
>> By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
>> hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
>> would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
>> end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
>> nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
> Perhaps the answer is in the part of the article you left out:
> "Clearly, it is easier to combine some tasks than others. "Not all distractions are the same," says Dr. Strayer. Things like knitting, cleaning and working out can be done automatically while the mind is engaged elsewhere. But doing homework and texting simultaneously isn't possible. (Sorry, kids)."
> In any case, nothing you posted supports a contention that multi-tasking is, in fact, adaptive. I suspect that is because the term "multi-tasking" is so ill-defined as to be largely untestable for adaptivity.
In the best of all possible worlds, where an all-knowing, benevolent, and omnipotent God was calling the shots, should He-She have known humans would invent cell-phones and cars and planned accordingly?
Now in an imperfect world where human brains have been sloppily thrown together by selection, it would be a more efficient use of limited cognitive resources to attend to the salient and ignore the irrelevant. This gets mucked up when teens think texting bff is (LOL) more important than that tractor trailer in the lane they just swerved into (OMG). That some people might be on the upper end of serial task processing to the point where they are less error prone when multitasking is not a problem for evolution. It could be a matter of behavioral malleability, perhaps due to marathon sessions of Runescape or WoW in their youth.
Or let's let the Supertasker authors themselves answer:
[quote] We suggest that
the supertasker and the odd man out lie at opposite ends
of the stability/plasticity continuum. Second, there may
be few costs (and possibly some benefits) associated with
being a supertasker, but the environmental and techno-
logical demands that favor this ability are relatively new,
and any selective advantage for being a supertasker has
yet to propagate throughout the population. Indeed, it has
been only in the last few generations that technology has
placed high value on multitasking ability. This time scale
is too short for any selective advantage to spread through
the population [/quote]
> [...]
> Pity there isn't more detail about what kind of tasks the 2.5% are superly good. I don't know, but I suspect they are just super at the kind of automatic multi-tasking that most of us do just a little bit well. In any case, your argument assumes its conclusion - first prove that multi-tasking is adaptive.
> > You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> > explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> > helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> > notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> > think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> > can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
> Read for comprehension. Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But if you are trying to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time, you are likely to do neither very well. You are likely to have your haploids culled, either by predation or barbecue, which is pretty much the definition of non-adaptive behaviour.
Actually, the author assumes that multitasking is adaptalicious
because she calls "sometimes tragic" the consequences of people's
inability to multitask. Ipso facto alakazoo, multitasking is
adaptalicious.
And try to stay with me here: how is it ever maladaptacious to not
have facility in multitasking? I can't think of a single way that it
is. Can you? And there's no way I can prove to you that I am unable
to think of a single way that multitasking is a negative -- that would
be asking me to prove a negative.
And taking your absurd example, how is it maladaptacious to have the
ability to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time?
It's not and you know it. Please try to come up with one way, just
one, that multitasking is maladaptalicious.
On Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:02:45 PM UTC+10, prawnster wrote:
> On Apr 24, 7:20 pm, timothya1...@gmail.com wrote:
> > [...]
> > Pity there isn't more detail about what kind of tasks the 2.5% are superly good. I don't know, but I suspect they are just super at the kind of automatic multi-tasking that most of us do just a little bit well. In any case, your argument assumes its conclusion - first prove that multi-tasking is adaptive.
> > > You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> > > explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> > > helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> > > notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> > > think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> > > can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
> > Read for comprehension. Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But if you are trying to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time, you are likely to do neither very well. You are likely to have your haploids culled, either by predation or barbecue, which is pretty much the definition of non-adaptive behaviour.
> Actually, the author assumes that multitasking is adaptalicious
> because she calls "sometimes tragic" the consequences of people's
> inability to multitask. Ipso facto alakazoo, multitasking is
> adaptalicious.
> And try to stay with me here: how is it ever maladaptacious to not
> have facility in multitasking? I can't think of a single way that it
> is. Can you? And there's no way I can prove to you that I am unable
> to think of a single way that multitasking is a negative -- that would
> be asking me to prove a negative.
> And taking your absurd example, how is it maladaptacious to have the
> ability to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time?
> It's not and you know it. Please try to come up with one way, just
> one, that multitasking is maladaptalicious.
I will try to use short words.
Let us say my lion-avoiding score is 99/100 when I am in single-tasking mode, but only 60/100 when in multi-tasking mode. If the score to escape this particular lion is anywhere between 60 and 99, then I am lunch and my multi-tasking efforts are a contributing cause. Seriously maladaptive. Thanks for playing.
> On Apr 24, 7:20 pm, timothya1...@gmail.com wrote:
>> [...]
>> Pity there isn't more detail about what kind of tasks the 2.5% are superly good. I don't know, but I suspect they are just super at the kind of automatic multi-tasking that most of us do just a little bit well. In any case, your argument assumes its conclusion - first prove that multi-tasking is adaptive.
>>> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
>>> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
>>> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
>>> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
>>> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
>>> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
>> Read for comprehension. Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. But if you are trying to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time, you are likely to do neither very well. You are likely to have your haploids culled, either by predation or barbecue, which is pretty much the definition of non-adaptive behaviour.
> Actually, the author assumes that multitasking is adaptalicious
> because she calls "sometimes tragic" the consequences of people's
> inability to multitask. Ipso facto alakazoo, multitasking is
> adaptalicious.
> And try to stay with me here: how is it ever maladaptacious to not
> have facility in multitasking? I can't think of a single way that it
> is. Can you? And there's no way I can prove to you that I am unable
> to think of a single way that multitasking is a negative -- that would
> be asking me to prove a negative.
> And taking your absurd example, how is it maladaptacious to have the
> ability to run away from a lion and light a fire at the same time?
> It's not and you know it. Please try to come up with one way, just
> one, that multitasking is maladaptalicious.
The need to multitask in the manner the *actual* research tested (vs. your cardboard cutout diorama that you smack at like a colicky infant) was something that may have arisen recently and thus our brains are not geared adequately for this OOTB. You might want to read the *actual* supertasking study *briefly* alluded to in the highly abstracted, but adequate (surprisingly for a biased wingtip wearing conservative fishrag under Murdoch's umbrella) WSJ account you didn't even provide a link for:
[quote] We suggest that
the supertasker and the odd man out lie at opposite ends
of the stability/plasticity continuum. Second, there may
be few costs (and possibly some benefits) associated with
being a supertasker, but the environmental and techno-
logical demands that favor this ability are relatively new,
and any selective advantage for being a supertasker has
yet to propagate throughout the population. Indeed, it has
been only in the last few generations that technology has
placed high value on multitasking ability. This time scale
is too short for any selective advantage to spread through
the population [/quote]
And that's taking an adaptationist slant on the issue. Could be that supertaskers have merely cultivated a skillset that is subject to phenotypic plasticity (ie- learned).
(2012/04/25 9:25), prawnster wrote:
> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> to Combine"
> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> world's population?
> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
> By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
> hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
> would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
> end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
> nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
Making up wordies : makes you sound smarterer or not as much muchness ?
> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> world's population?
This is silly on many counts, but I'll focus on just one.
"Advantageous" depends on circumstance. For instance, the ability to use food energy efficiently and store excess energy as fat must be a crucial advantage in conditions of food scarcity. Likewise a "taste" for high-fat foods that you might only catch once in a while.
Access to supermarkets in the most recent tiny fraction of human history has turned that on its head for some of us. I walk 5 miles a day for exercise. That could be offset by a single hamburger.
On Apr 25, 4:08 am, *Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
> And that's taking an adaptationist slant on the issue. Could be that
> supertaskers have merely cultivated a skillset that is subject to
> phenotypic plasticity (ie- learned).
I'm still waiting for you or anyone else to explain to me how the
ability to multitask is anything but adaptacious.... Still waiting.
Or please just admit that multitasking is a pure benefit, without
exception, and riddle me this: why can only 2.5% of people multitask
effectively? This is your burden to prove. According to Darwinistas,
since people have been 'volving for grillions of years and
multitasking is so adaptacious, we should all be smackscoop
multitaskers. And yet, we're not. Sadly, we're typically capable of
doing just one thing at a time with any facility.
I'm also wondering why I don't have wings, considering my grandma was
a fruitfly, according to some man with a PhD, huzzah huzzah.
I'm also wondering why I don't have eyes in the back of my head. Can
you think of a single downside to 360-degree vision? Again, I can't.
> On Apr 25, 6:34 am, Arkalen <arka...@inbox.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> Making up wordies : makes you sound smarterer or not as much muchness ?
>> Answer : completely untruthfulish.
> Come on, sir. You can do better than that.
> One of the first man's tasks was naming everything God created. It's
> a man's prerogative to coin new words. And it charms the panties off
> of women.
Weird. My panties must be malfunctioning. Or maybe I'm just not laughing
hard enough.
There was a Scientific American article recently (well, recently
enough that I remember it) that said women multitask much more
successfully than men, but only after the first pregnancy. Apparently
the hormones associated with bearing a child partition the female
brain's hard drive.
That kind of makes sense. A woman doing child care in a primitive
society might have to attend to multiple rather urgent inputs, none of
which require highly sophisticated responses. The fire is going out
while the child wanders near the water, etc.
On Apr 25, 12:53 pm, TimR <timothy...@aol.com> wrote:
> There was a Scientific American article recently (well, recently
> enough that I remember it) that said women multitask much more
> successfully than men, but only after the first pregnancy. Apparently
> the hormones associated with bearing a child partition the female
> brain's hard drive.
> That kind of makes sense. A woman doing child care in a primitive
> society might have to attend to multiple rather urgent inputs, none of
> which require highly sophisticated responses. The fire is going out
> while the child wanders near the water, etc.
It has been observed by a wise man that a woman, faced with a fly ball
and an infant in peril does not consider the inning or the score or
the opponent but simply rescues the child. That seems rather narrowly
fucussed to me.
> > There was a Scientific American article recently (well, recently
> > enough that I remember it) that said women multitask much more
> > successfully than men, but only after the first pregnancy. Apparently
> > the hormones associated with bearing a child partition the female
> > brain's hard drive.
> > That kind of makes sense. A woman doing child care in a primitive
> > society might have to attend to multiple rather urgent inputs, none of
> > which require highly sophisticated responses. The fire is going out
> > while the child wanders near the water, etc.
> It has been observed by a wise man that a woman, faced with a fly ball
> and an infant in peril does not consider the inning or the score or
> the opponent but simply rescues the child. That seems rather narrowly
> fucussed to me.
> --
I don't find this credible at all. It is probably just a misogynist
rumour to show that woman are really different from us . anyhow, to
get back to the important stuff, how did the game end?
On Apr 25, 12:53 pm, TimR <timothy...@aol.com> wrote:
> There was a Scientific American article recently (well, recently
> enough that I remember it) that said women multitask much more
> successfully than men, but only after the first pregnancy. Apparently
> the hormones associated with bearing a child partition the female
> brain's hard drive.
> That kind of makes sense. A woman doing child care in a primitive
> society might have to attend to multiple rather urgent inputs, none of
> which require highly sophisticated responses. The fire is going out
> while the child wanders near the water, etc.
While the male had better focus on the hunt, or he is hurt or dead.
On the other hand, some people (like me) have terrible reflexes,
because my brain is always thinking, rather than reacting. Also
seriousl;y maladaptive. In compensation, I am able to grade/read and
listen to TV or follow a meeting, although not as well as 20 years ago.
On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:37:12 -0700 (PDT), prawnster
<zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
>On Apr 25, 4:08 am, *Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> And that's taking an adaptationist slant on the issue. Could be that
>> supertaskers have merely cultivated a skillset that is subject to
>> phenotypic plasticity (ie- learned).
>I'm still waiting for you or anyone else to explain to me how the
>ability to multitask is anything but adaptacious.... Still waiting.
>Or please just admit that multitasking is a pure benefit, without
>exception, and riddle me this: why can only 2.5% of people multitask
>effectively? This is your burden to prove. According to Darwinistas,
>since people have been 'volving for grillions of years and
>multitasking is so adaptacious, we should all be smackscoop
>multitaskers. And yet, we're not. Sadly, we're typically capable of
>doing just one thing at a time with any facility.
>I'm also wondering why I don't have wings, considering my grandma was
>a fruitfly, according to some man with a PhD, huzzah huzzah.
>I'm also wondering why I don't have eyes in the back of my head. Can
>you think of a single downside to 360-degree vision? Again, I can't.
> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> to Combine"
> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> world's population?
Single focus people who try to do their taxes and have sex at the same
time are more likely to improperly use contraceptives than the multi-
tasker. Selective advantage- Single focus people.
> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
Newsflash! For most of human evolutionary history people weren't
talking on cell phones and driving at the same time.
In article <614f3de8-737c-47cf-b210-e6b4ec86a...@iu9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
prawnster <zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> to Combine"...
*
Most do not know that the mind of a man only has two emotions:
<zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
>The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
>or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
>really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
>fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
>"The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
>to Combine"
><....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
>underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
>are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
>a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
>buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
>push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
>consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
>times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
>....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
>[an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
>than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
>multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
>two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
>So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
>adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
>multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
>people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
>now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
>world's population?
Bad texters are slowly being taken out of the gene pool. Give it a
few more generations. :)
>You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
>explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
>helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
>notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
>think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
>can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
>By the way, the author is Melinda Beck. You've seen evidence now that
>hers is a mind capable of extraordinary self-contradiction. My guess
>would be that she multitasked somewhere between the beginning and the
>end of the paragraph in question and didn't realize she was scribbling
>nonsense. But an editor should have caught it.
> On Apr 24, 5:25 pm, prawnster <zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
> > The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
> > or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
> > really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
> > fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
> > "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
> > to Combine"
> > <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
> > underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
> > are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
> > a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
> > buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
> > push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
> > consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
> > times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
> > ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
> > [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
> > than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
> > multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
> > two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
> > So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
> > adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
> > multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
> > people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
> > now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
> > world's population?
> Single focus people who try to do their taxes and have sex at the same
> time are more likely to improperly use contraceptives than the multi-
> tasker. Selective advantage- Single focus people.
> > You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
> > explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
> > helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
> > notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
> > think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
> > can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
> Newsflash! For most of human evolutionary history people weren't
> talking on cell phones and driving at the same time.
Of course they were Inez! after all, humans were created just a few
thousand years ago, so forty years of driving with phones is a
significant percentage of this :o)
> On Apr 25, 4:08 am, *Hemidactylus*<ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> And that's taking an adaptationist slant on the issue. Could be that
>> supertaskers have merely cultivated a skillset that is subject to
>> phenotypic plasticity (ie- learned).
> I'm still waiting for you or anyone else to explain to me how the
> ability to multitask is anything but adaptacious.... Still waiting.
You snipped reference to Watson and Strayer's "Supertaskers: Profiles in extraordinary multitasking ability" (restored below) where they give an explanation, though I think an alternative is viable (see below).
> Or please just admit that multitasking is a pure benefit, without
> exception, and riddle me this: why can only 2.5% of people multitask
> effectively? This is your burden to prove.
Why? And "prove"? Me? WTF. You're not even paying attention, just trolling and snipping.
It isn't as the fact of evolution stands or falls on the appearance of some behavioral anomaly called "supertasking" which could very well be nothing but an artefact or false pattern. It is for evolutionary psychology, which is the bastard panadaptationistic stepchild of evolutionary biology.
> According to Darwinistas,
> since people have been 'volving for grillions of years and
> multitasking is so adaptacious, we should all be smackscoop
> multitaskers. And yet, we're not.
> Sadly, we're typically capable of
> doing just one thing at a time with any facility.
You are obviously more interested in trolling than discussing the issue of whether multitasking has adaptive advantage. The actual research article that I quoted was snipped by you without comment. I will restore it so you can avoid it again:
[quote] We suggest that
the supertasker and the odd man out lie at opposite ends
of the stability/plasticity continuum. Second, there may
be few costs (and possibly some benefits) associated with
being a supertasker, but the environmental and techno-
logical demands that favor this ability are relatively new,
and any selective advantage for being a supertasker has
yet to propagate throughout the population. Indeed, it has
been only in the last few generations that technology has
placed high value on multitasking ability. This time scale
is too short for any selective advantage to spread through
the population [/quote]
Thus the landscape may have shifted toward a multitasking (or supertasking) environment most recently and we are basically wired for an ancient environment that is no longer relevant.
An alternative to the adaptationist view of Watson and Strayer quoted above is that supertaskers may have acquired that rare ability through training (perhaps by playing video games). This involves plasticity more than something hardwired selected in the ancient adaptive environment of our ancestors.
[quote]It's possible that supertaskers are tapping into several other mental mechanisms to maintain performance. For instance, they may be able to focus on multiple tasks simultaneously simply by better allocating their attention — in other words, they may be able to triage information as it comes in, disregarding irrelevant and distracting information and focusing only on the inputs that are critical to performing a given task.
That's what Daphne Bavelier, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, thinks might be occurring in the supertasker equivalents she has seen in her lab. Bavelier studies the effect of action-video-game playing on people's ability to split attention and multitask. In her work, she has found that people who devote five hours or more per week to such action games for a year show the same heightened performance abilities as Watson and Strayer's supertaskers.
Bavelier is now conducting further studies of these individuals to figure out why their multitasking abilities improved and whether the skill can be learned by other people. "Possibly, their allocation of resources is more flexible and more targeted to the type of information that is immediately relevant," she says. "They might be less distracted by irrelevant noise and therefore able to put more of their resources toward the task at hand." [/quote]
[quote]Green and Bavelier15 initially adapted the UFOV
task for use on groups of expert gamers and
nongamers and in a subsequent training study where
groups of nongamers played an action or a nonaction
video game for 10 h. They found that habitual action
video game play significantly improved performance
on the UFOV at all target eccentricities. Notably,
action game experience produced benefits that gener-
alized to portions of the visual field beyond the extent
of normal game play. By adding a central task to
the paradigm, an extension of this study established
that gamers are not reaping these greater peripheral
benefits at the cost of central vision, as they matched
the nongamer performance on the central task while
again outperforming them on the peripheral one.16
Interestingly, this result also suggests greater multi-
tasking ability in gamers. Introduction of an additional
task typically results in decreased performance on the
original task. It did so for nongamers, but gamers’ per-
formance remained unchanged by the additional task,
indicating that they may possess abilities similar to the
‘super-tasking’ described by Watson and Strayer.17 [/quote]
> I'm also wondering why I don't have wings, considering my grandma was
> a fruitfly, according to some man with a PhD, huzzah huzzah.
Nobody said your grandma was a fruitfly. Fruitflies and people share common ancestry. This ancestor was more like a worm, perhaps the archetypally inferred Urbilaterian another topic avoided by you:
> On Apr 25, 11:39 pm, Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Apr 24, 5:25 pm, prawnster<zweibro...@ymail.com> wrote:
>>> The Wall Street Journal, which simply cannot resist smuggling a veiled
>>> or not-so-veiled reference to evolution into almost any sciency story,
>>> really displayed some serious cognitive dissonance in today's
>>> fishwrap. To wit, an excerpt:
>>> "The Brain Is Wired to Focus on Just One Thing; Which Tasks are Easier
>>> to Combine"
>>> <....These findings, published in the journal Nature last week,
>>> underscore why people aren't very good at multitasking -- our brains
>>> are wired for "selective attention" and can focus on only one thing at
>>> a time. That innate ability has helped humans survive in a world
>>> buzzing with visual and auditory stimulation. But we keep trying to
>>> push the limits with multitasking, sometimes with tragic
>>> consequences. Drivers talking on cellphones, for example, are four
>>> times as likely to get into traffic accidents as those who aren't.
>>> ....Utah researchers have identified a rare group of "supertaskers" --
>>> [an] estimated 2.5% of the population -- who seem to attend to more
>>> than one thing with ease. Many more people think they can effectively
>>> multitask, but they are really shifting their attention rapidly betwen
>>> two things and not getting the full effect of either, experts say.>
>>> So which is it, Darwinists? If the ability to multitask is so
>>> adaptalicious and advantageous, then why are so few people good
>>> multitaskers? If the inability to multitask creates dangers for
>>> people then wouldn't that inability have been bred out of existence by
>>> now, or at least down to a severe minority of, say, 2.5% of the
>>> world's population?
>> Single focus people who try to do their taxes and have sex at the same
>> time are more likely to improperly use contraceptives than the multi-
>> tasker. Selective advantage- Single focus people.
>>> You see my problem here, don't you? In a single paragraph, the writer
>>> explains that people's innate ability to focus on one thing at a time
>>> helps us survive, and later in that same paragraph--same paragraph!--
>>> notes how this single-minded focus is dangerous and deadly. I can
>>> think of many ways that an ability to multitask is advantageous and I
>>> can think of no downside to it. Your move, Darwinistas.
>> Newsflash! For most of human evolutionary history people weren't
>> talking on cell phones and driving at the same time.
> Of course they were Inez! after all, humans were created just a few
> thousand years ago, so forty years of driving with phones is a
> significant percentage of this :o)
> On Apr 25, 12:53 pm, TimR <timothy...@aol.com> wrote:
> > There was a Scientific American article recently (well, recently
> > enough that I remember it) that said women multitask much more
> > successfully than men, but only after the first pregnancy. Apparently
> > the hormones associated with bearing a child partition the female
> > brain's hard drive.
> > That kind of makes sense. A woman doing child care in a primitive
> > society might have to attend to multiple rather urgent inputs, none of
> > which require highly sophisticated responses. The fire is going out
> > while the child wanders near the water, etc.
> It has been observed by a wise man that a woman, faced with a fly ball
> and an infant in peril does not consider the inning or the score or
> the opponent but simply rescues the child. That seems rather narrowly
> fucussed to me.
> --
> Will in New Haven
Even if it's the bottom of the ninth with the bags loaded and the score tied of the championship series.
