[mortsnort]

Tik Tok is obvious brain rot, but what if one's time at the dopamine carnival is spent consuming "brain-growth" content? Phones essentially put all human knowledge at our fingertips, where is the line of diminishing or negative returns when trying to consume it?

[spaqin]

Popular science videos is still filler; I'd be inclined agree if you were scrolling MIT lectures (and watching them in their entirety), but how much of actual knowledge (and not random tidbits) do you retain from short form videos?

[mortsnort]

Where is popular science videos coming from? Blogs, Wikipedia, research papers, Substacks, newspapers, magazines, ChatGPT, etc.

[satyrun]

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a short form video in conveying information but what information in this context can be compressed down to fit?

How much can you really learn from even a 30 second Feynman lecture?

[YuukiRey]

99% of the time it is consumption without ever utilizing the knowledge for any creative endeavor . And without application the knowledge will quickly fade and you’ll find yourself watching the same 10min video on statistics 101 for the 3rd time, because you keep forgetting.

It’s still mindless consumption if you don’t interact with the material in any meaningful way (follow up questions, application, try to refute it, evaluate a hypothesis you had before watching it, …)

[cgriswald]

Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to the type of video. As a writer of fiction, even a 'mindless' video made for entertainment can send my mind reeling through possibilities, relationships, and connections I'd never thought about before, but I think that's just a quibble over wording.

You always lose what you don't use over a long enough time window and in proportion to how much you used it when you did use it. Everything that is true about this 10 minute video is true about a college course. You just retain the college course for longer because (presumably) you've spent more time in class than a 10 minutes video and you've done your homework. But if you don't use it after college, there's a strong chance you've forgotten the details.

Sometimes it's just important to know a thing exists, what it can be used for, and roughly how it is used. Everything else can be learned or refreshed when you need it.

Suppose you've watched that stats 101 video but didn't follow up. You now know:

- The broad strokes of stats 101 even if you don't have perfect recall on the details.

- What it can be used for.

- Whether the particular video is worth watching when and if you do need to use it.

Initial exposure is important. A claim could be made that if nothing is ever done with it, it is a waste; but how does someone without any knowledge know enough to decide whether they should go further with it or not?

[wellwellwell2]

> ('Wrongquote':) Whether your mind is engaged or not seems unrelated to any video.

heck...damn... that was a lot of fun in the Job's area, steve Jobs official presented his 1st Ipad showing an interactive Book for children but also adults, and for sure there was something to learn.

> But... Does it also let you unset any limits?

Nah they never released any well known interactive books as far as i know, so i didn't bought that ipad. But was interested in the 'screen-only'-technology since 2003 (bought my first tablet PC around 2005)...

A few days ago, there was a topic about the book 'neuromancer' could you even imagine such a book as interactive (not a game) ?

It may took years and a hell of a crowd to finish something like that satisfying enough to get only a niche of people.

HINT: The Message of the Book (the Punk-Part) was about: 'Everybody needs money (Products) so you have to get a job.'

Quoting more "nonsens" but remarkable;

It's quite possible to live with websites. Nothing else.

Clue: Apps let you set a limit on withdrawals when you are away from home.

(edited: found some typos^^) You enjoyed the ads, but do you enjoy the products designed to optimize Clickrates and funnel conversions?

And if it was too OT, think just a random person typing something...never mind...

ᬛ btw: google didn't show, what does that mean - it has more speculated 'space' one screen than the regular charsetting, tinyer chars i had known and seen before...but... ??

[sjw987]

This is exactly correct.

You just have to look at language learning. Some people who move abroad to a different country with a different language can (over a couple of years) forget huge parts of their own native language.

The internet bombards us with tons of information from all over the place. Even those who have curious minds aren't practicing enough additional engagement to remember all of that information.

Sometimes I feel sad using the internet in the same way I feel going to bookstores. I see so much that interests me but know I only have the capacity to remember, learn, or read so much of it. There may be time to skim a lot of it at surface level, but there isn't enough time and capacity to dive deep into it all.

[sjw987]

Truthfully most online "content" is not growing your brain. It's not the right format for proper learning and retention. Most people using the internet aren't tapping the fountain of human knowledge, and even most of those that think they are, are not.

Quick fun facts on TikTok and Reddit, as well as quick searching and skimming of Google/ChatGPT/Wikipedia are only conducive to superficial learning, unless you are doing something more to wrap that knowledge around your brain (i.e. using it in work/a project, expanding the context in your mind by writing an essay, reading more of it).

This is very much the by-product of the times we live in. Less people are truly learning things, and instead we are learning how to find the information we need. We have things like the internet sitting there, so we take the path of least resistance and use them as and when we need them. It works fine until you don't have an internet connection.