Cognition (or me think ok, how you think you think?)
I keep seeing articles like this about multitasking. They make me wonder.
I know that the thing that IQ tests are unquestionably the best at measuring is how good you are at taking IQ tests. Is this an accurate assesment of how these people's minds are functioning? The conditions and methods of thought that an IQ test is focusing on are very different from remembering several project in short bursts of attention.
Not that one cant get overloaded, but i always feel at my best when i am working on several things at once. And I did just dandy on every standarized test they threw at me. I think we just have to think more about how to assess what people are processing, and what else isgoing on in there that we aren't accounting for as intelligance yet.
posted by Daniel @ 4/26/2005 12:16:00 AM
4 Comments:
Articles such as that are pretty much useless. There is no mention of the methodology used to come to the conclusion, and in fact no particular reason to believe the conclusion stated by the article as any relationship whatsoever to a real research study.
When reporters do give enough information to track down the actual academic papers, it is usually even easier to demonstrate that the article is full of crap.
From my reading on the topic though, I've come to the conclusion that there is a signiicant cost for context switching, but that ironically some people need to switch contexts regularly to stay involved with what they are doing. Though I don't have any references on hand to back up my claims. ;)
Well, i just think it is disturbing that there seems to be a countercounterculture pissing and moaning about the future and how much better things would be if we were all noble savages. Gimme a break.
I dont think that all of the bits of this backlash realize that they are part of the same movement, but the fact if the matter to my mind is that it is silly at this point to wish for a "simple" world, and that our minds are a lot more flexible and powerful than people give them credit for.
I'm sure there were fuckheads way back when complaining about how much “better life was before people came up with this written language crap.”
I'm also sure they got largely ignored.
Also, I would be totaly in favor of starting "human preserves" where we could ship all such people to live in "natural splendor" without any of the technology they so hate.
Preferably such preserves would be very far away from me.
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