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Comment by FinnLobsien | Hacker News Reader

I believe that we'll see a lot of "x is good for your brain" news (with X just being any activity that doesn't involve a screen), now that attention spans are so short and everyone feels like their brain isn't the same anymore.

The same way we got gyms when people realized physical inactivity is super unhealthy.

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Stopping and looking at some birds and what they're doing is really relaxing. Be it pigeons, seaguls looking for fries or if lucky a crow or rook.

The corvids looking back wondering what you're doing and they'll communicate back too.

I think becoming a person who would stop and do that, or go birdwatch in general, is probably the important part.

Mean sure, but doing just that misses the learning and specific attention part. Going from "bird" to species, learning about morphological, vocal differences is going beyond "being a little more active and interested in your surroundings". It's really engaging every sensory and cognitive system in concert.

That said, collecting plants or beetles is probably equally beneficial. Geocaching comes to mind too.

Although, I wonder if looking up may contribute, given old people tend deform and bend forward with age. Could affect blood or lymphatic circulation.

What if we took the idea of two minutes of hate session from the dystopian 1984 and made it available all the time. Everyone could carry in their pocket their own personal two minutes of hate that they can have any time they want as often as they want. Orwell never dreamed so high

We all have that already, it's called smartphone sadly.

It works with whatever political direction you lean on, which stance you have on two or more genders, which religion you love or hate, which gaming platform you prefer, how old you are and many more "divide and conquer"-topics.

It'll be difficult to replace because it's so effective already...

Might want to take up bird watching: an early indicator of cognitive decline is the loss of an ability to pick up on subtext.

> We all have that already, it's called smartphone sadly.

That's what the person you responded to was saying.

What percentage of people are neither of the simple common XY nor XX chromosomes? It's about as many people as there are with red hair. If you don't include chimerics it's about 0.25-1.7%, if you do include twin chimerics it's 8%, not including mothers micro-chimerism.

Probably shouldn't be having those Kenyans (Kalenjin) competing in marathons either. Completely unfair advantage.

All models are wrong, some are useful.

At first, I thought this was culture war bait and then I read the Wikipedia article and it is.

It is culture war bait

what?

The Hate Amplifier

Twitter? Everyone gets a soapbox to rant on.

I suspect we'll find out that "programming is good for your brain" as well...

NB I'm 61 and recently started developing something almost entirely for the mental workout if provides

Edit: I also wanted to use HTMX so I could become CEO one day

That's great! I think anything that's not passively consuming a screen will be known as "good for your brain", the same way that regular food has become known as "health food".

Eschewing eating ultraprocessed, factory-made food is now seen as a deliberate health choice, even though it used to be the default. I think the same is happening with the brain.

Reading a book is now seen as some erudite choice. Having a hobby like knitting, birdwatching, etc. will be some kind of "good for your brain" activity. Things that used to be the only option are now "healthy choices".

I think you can just become CEO of HTMX, don't have to actually use it

Well, I'm old fashioned about these things...

Funnily enough, my bird watching does in fact involve a screen — the electronic viewfinder on my camera[0].

Jokes aside, there is a very definite difference in how my brain "feels" when I'm walking around, camera in hand, looking for things to photograph. It's like I'm in a different "cognitive mode", for the lack of a better term. It's not just about being present and in the moment, but about seeing the world around you from a different perspective.

0. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tnMlazV0g1syoRPLALJ6576YSYQ...

multiple times in the last few months I've done a thing and then a week after having done it, felt like it was something I'd have to be crazy to attempt, even though I did it and it went fine and it wasn't even that wacky. Because you get in a different mindset when you're actually doing something than when you're sitting at home wasting time on RuneScape*

* probably one of the less bad things you can do on a screen, since it predates the everything-for-attention era

RuneScape is certainly far from the very worst of the internet, but it's still wise to be wary of Skinner boxes. Of course I don't follow that advice either.

It's a video game, so it's a skinner box by definition, but at least it's one designed for actual enjoyment more than for revenue.

I think it is slightly different than that. I think it is more about active brain activity versus passive. Learning how to play Riichi Mahjong (e.g.) would likely show a similar effect. A lot of people push brain puzzles as a tool against dementia, etc. but it is only helpful when learning a new puzzle type. Once you over learn it, our innate pattern matching takes over and you start playing on auto-pilot, it stops "rewiring" your brain. Just sitting on the couch binging streaming or swiping through shorts is likely to atrophy your brain.

Obviously being out in nature has other mental health benefits. The key thing is to keep learning and stay curious. Drive to some new nearby town on a weekend and learn about its history. Learn a new hobby like full f-stop photography or learn how to bake or cook (learn all four base sauces). Take up board games and explore all the different kinds of experiences they provide today.

> with X just being any activity that doesn't involve a screen

and done by top 1 percent of the world

"Doing X is good for your brain/health."

Where 'X' is almost anything that humans evolved to do in hunter gatherer nomadic tribal groups.

In other news, sky is blue.

    > now that attention spans are so short

Oh please, this is Internet nonsense. Google tells me:

    > Psychologists and neuroscientists find no structural decline in the human brain's ability to focus. Sustained attention limits remain largely unchanged.

I and pretty much everyone I know has repeatedly mentioned how difficult of a time they're having reading books, code (software eng. friends), or even watching the first half of a movie without feeling the need to open their phones and scrolling Instagram.

The parent comment may be a joke, but it's unclear if it is. This makes it possibly the best kind of joke.

How many of these people before simply paused the movie to get a snack or converse a bit?

I don't think that's the same as having the compulsion to be online and having very little interest in long time-span activities.

Is it not? Perhaps phones make us better at (and finding more joy in) quickly switching tasks, rather than in reducing maximum sustained attention.

At least this study would seem to suggest something similar.

This is all very anecdotal (and thus not quantifiable) - but I find the need for others and I to check their phones far more distracting and frequent than the need for getting up and stretching your legs and/or getting snacks during a movie.

then I suppose you and everyone you know has basically broken their brain with toxic social media. Or similar?

my spouse and I (30s) had no problem sitting through the new Spider-Man movie without opening up our phones.

Yep, I would say social media, especially in us Gen Zs, has made us more cynical and worried about the state of the world, apart from the obvious attention span problems.

We live in India, so for example, the rise of online (and offline) hatred towards us has definitely had an impact.

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