dagblog - Comments for "It's Not Just Rude, It's Ruining Your Brain"

If I don't pull on the

Donal — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:28:57 +0000

In reply to I pull on a backsplash and

If I don't pull on the backsplash now, some student will later. And that will piss off the client.

I pull on a backsplash and

kyle flynn — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 04:49:47 +0000

In reply to I wish I didn't feel that

I pull on a backsplash and it falls off on the counter.

To paraphrase FLW, stop pulling on the backsplashes.

Seriously though, I don't doubt you run into these types of issues all the time. And I'm sure it's disappointing to you. But these complaints have nothing to do with my gripe. Presumably some of that stuff will be corrected and whoever did the hiring will adjust going forward. I imagine this includes the client as well, which might put you and your associates on notice, too. Good luck with it all, I guess. Just do me a favor and ease up on the Grampa Simpson routine.

And that book cover? I've got no idea what you're driving at.

(No subject)

Donal — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:46:27 +0000

In reply to "Comparing the finish

"Comparing the finish

kyle flynn — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:21:00 +0000

In reply to I went and read the comment

"Comparing the finish quality of what they build now with what I have seen in buildings from fifty or more years ago is truly depressing." --Donal from Seaton's blog

Donal is under the false impression that people in the trades did better work in the past. His(?) disparaging comments throw a whole sector of folks under the bus. Millions of people really. What's worse, he(?) takes on none of the responsibility for any of the quality gap he(?) imagines -- "...what they build now..." Last I checked, architects were an important link in the chain when it comes to building. I think we ought to share in the fruits of our labor as well as sharing the responsibility for our shortcomings. Instead, Donal comes at it with grumpy old man POV. "They don't build 'em like they used to" horseshit. The dig about the radio and Van Halen and Los Lobos are just garnishes for the snob sandwich he's(?) serving.

The reality is terms like "cob job" go back centuries. There have always been folks willing to cut corners to rip people off or just get a job done without going broke. And there have always been folks making these "casual invidious comparisons," as quinn put it recently. Nothing has changed. Workers are as skilled and conscientious as ever. Some are lucky enough to work on amazing, beautiful projects, Most, however, wind up in hard, lousy jobs under enormous pressure to finish up fast. And the pay ain't nothin' to brag about either.

One of the problems with looking at individual past works and holding them up as examples of "how it was done then" is that there are a couple of good reasons these works are still around. The primary is that they were built well, better than their contemporaries. And that probably has quite a bit to do with the available resources for these individual projects, which bought better skills, better materials and more time. Same as now. Or these works simply enjoyed better maintenance. Again, resources, and again, same as now. Imagine all the shit that's been torn down and chucked from every era. And in twenty and fifty and two hundred years from now the story will be the same.

But I guess it's easier to just look around at your own disappointments and blame someone else.

I wish I didn't feel that

Donal — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:57:39 +0000

In reply to I'm beginning to suspect

I wish I didn't feel that way, but I am disappointed by the quality of the work I see. I pull on a backsplash and it falls off on the counter. A third of the window sills were never sanded and finished. Paint was oversprayed on the skylights. A deep gouge at eye level in a brand new toilet partition. Signal boxes not even close to level. And all just left there. I think people need to give their work some thought.

I went and read the comment

we are stardust — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:14:41 +0000

In reply to I'm beginning to suspect

I went and read the comment at Seaton's blog, kyle flynn. I'd be interested to know what you mean. I think I know, but knowing is better than guessing.

I'm beginning to suspect

kyle flynn — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:31:38 +0000

In reply to I think this ties in with

I'm beginning to suspect you're oblivious to how insulting your comment here and over at Seaton's blog is. I think you need to give it some thought.

Er...the first question I

we are stardust — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:01:40 +0000

In reply to It's Not Just Rude, It's Ruining Your Brain

Er...the first question I have is how and when did it become accepted behavior for students to fart around on Facebook and talk or text on their cellphones in class? Is it because if you get admitted to a school like MIT they figure if you pay the tuition, it's down to you if you learn anything in a class, maybe?

If I were the prof, all that interference would send me 'round the bend. Or are they speaking here of lectures with no ask and answer learning? I confess, that was the sort of learning I uh...learned in.

Pretty obviously, it's the

quinn esq — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:35:20 +0000

In reply to I think this ties in with

Pretty obviously, it's the Van Halen.

Reading the whole original

Obey — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:15:39 +0000

In reply to It's Not Just Rude, It's Ruining Your Brain

Reading the whole original interview, I don't see any evidence that they have established a causal relationship between heightened multitasking behavior and loss of these cognitive abilities like relevance discrimination and task-shifting, etc. All they have is a correlation: i.e. kids who aren't concentrating are ... poor at concentrating.

Actually, in the interview Nass admits as much, after talking about all the 'evidence' he has amassed. He then says that he ... hasn't started investigating the causal issue:

Explain to me the fMRI that you're going to be doing.

This is probably better explained by Anthony Wagner, [researcher at the Stanford Memory Laboratory and associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Program]. But basically the ideas are, our brain is divided into pieces, with different pieces doing different things. So the question is, when I confront you with something, what parts of your brain does your brain decide to use?

So, for example, if I present you with a lot of potentially irrelevant information, some people go for it, just say, "Oh, more, more, more, more, more!" Others say: "No, I'd like to work with what I've got. That's what I want to focus on." That would be indicated by different parts of the brain lighting up or not, and that's what we're trying to see.

So what are the potential outcomes of what you're doing later today?

The potential outcome of the fMRI is to start to ask the question, is it nurture or nature? Are people born multitaskers, or are they made multitaskers?

So until we get some data on how behavior affects cognitive abillity over time, we basically know ... nothing. All that we really know at this point is that people who are easily distracted are poor at various forms of information processing. We don't know if (i) there are more of them than there used to be, nor (ii) what makes them poor at these things.

It may well be that the proliferation of distractions in the digital age is making the kids stupid. There are lots of possible hypotheses here. My rough guess from teaching is that smart kids - those who are good and quick at sorting, processing, switching information sources and tasks - are getting much more efficient as they hone their skills through constant disciplined multitasking. And stupid kids have a whole new set of temptations to pull them away from the task at hand and thereby diminishing their ability to focus over time.