# "Oh, I'm very good at multi-tasking!"



## Metryq (May 3, 2012)

I love it:

*Belgium Makes Teens Text And Drive During License Test*
http://www.geekologie.com/2012/05/belgium-makes-teens-text-and-drive-durin.php


----------



## HareBrain (May 3, 2012)

There was a feature on the local (south of England) news a few days ago that said half of under-25 drivers admitted to texting (or accessing Facebook etc) whilst driving. Terrifying. I knew someone on another forum, a cyclist, who was killed by some **** who was doing that.


----------



## hopewrites (May 4, 2012)

I will agree it is impossible now, and people die on both sides of the wheel when the bounds of this impossibility are pushed. But humans are super adaptable and in the far future we may well develop the skills, phones, and cars to make this a safer reality.


----------



## Metryq (May 4, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> But humans are super adaptable and in the far future we may well develop the skills, phones, and cars to make this a safer reality.



Cars will become fully automated, or transportation will take a new form, long before _we_ change that much. Humans simply do not multi-task, and the interval of time to mentally "shift gears" is far too long when traveling even at urban speeds. 

Perhaps you've seen the studies showing a hands-free cell phone call—when the driver's eyes are on the road—presents a significant degradation in driving performance due to distraction? People play the radio while driving and talk to passengers. However, it is possible to intermittently "zone out" a radio, as well as passengers, or passengers also react to what is going on in the road. Many people cannot ignore a ringing phone. In the same way, people have "adapted" to focus on who they are talking to on the phone—it becomes a priority even over driving. And that is the problem.

(My roommate typically holds the TV remote and often "forgets" to mute the sound when ads come on. At those times, I can actually see his brain slow down as he tries to talk while "fending off" noise designed to be distracting—his speech slows down and there are pregnant gaps between words. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to listen to what he is saying. When I get irritated enough, I lean over and snatch the remote and mute the sound. Suddenly, my roommate's speech is fluid again. Some people are aware when they are being distracted and do something about it. Others stubbornly try to bull through it—it's as though they don't have any brain cycles left over even to note, "Hey, I'm unfocused.")


----------



## hopewrites (May 5, 2012)

while i agree that modern humans dont multitask as well as we would like to, I must speculate that we do it better then our ancestors did. and I think that increasing devotion to mass media is speeding the nessity to adapt for those devotees. 
nessity is the mother of adaptation.


----------



## Gary Compton (May 5, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> the nessity to adapt for those devotees.
> nessity is the mother of adaptation.



Read all about it, spellchecker suffers mental breakdown in Washington DC


----------



## hopewrites (May 5, 2012)

not in DC  how many s's should there be?


----------



## Gary Compton (May 5, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> not in DC  how many s's should there be?



Necessity = something that is essential, especially a basic requirement.

Sorry for being a geek. Going to bed it's 1.48 AM


----------



## hopewrites (May 5, 2012)

night


----------



## Ursa major (May 5, 2012)

Metryq said:


> Cars will become fully automated...


...and so when the impact comes, the seatbelt opens and the airbag disengages, you can blame it all on one type of Windows as you fly through another....


----------



## Hex (May 5, 2012)

I see people doing this a lot around the school next to my son's nursery. It makes me... well, the polite way to say it would be: incandescent with rage.

Last Christmas one of them knocked over the lollipop man -- he went straight over the top of the car (but luckily he wasn't killed).


----------



## j d worthington (May 5, 2012)

Actually, about a year or two ago (if memory serves) there were some studies done on the subject of "multi-tasking", and the results showed the entire concept to be a dismal failure. It is very much an idea promoted (for obvious reasons) by businesses, especially in regard to employees and "efficiency", as well as an attractive one given the pace of modern life, but the upshot is that efficiency actually drops exponentially the more one attempts to multi-task. That certain individuals may be able to do so has not been ruled out, but humans in general simply don't.


----------



## Vertigo (May 5, 2012)

We can do a certain amount of multi-tasking by using different sides of our brains for different tasks. However some task are hardwired to a particular side, for example the left side of the brain controlling the right hand etc. Women multi-task better than men, and that's not just an old wife's tale; women can move certain tasks from one side of the brain to the other, whilst men are less able to do this switching of sides.

I have seen it sjpeculated that in evolution it was important for women to monitor babies whilst still doing their other tasks. Whereas men, when hunting potentially dangerous game, had to focus with no distractions and so favoured single tasking.


----------



## anivid (May 5, 2012)

- yes and the _truncus corpus callosum_, the thick wall between the left and right hemispere, actually is much thicker in males, causing them to be bit slower - (no not in the uptake, well sometimes may be 
- but to change between the two hemispheres - to change subject so to speak


----------



## Vertigo (May 5, 2012)

Ah I didn't know that but it certainly fits; me at least - one thing at a time please...


----------



## Metryq (May 5, 2012)

Don't confuse "round robin" juggling of tasks with actual multi-tasking. Again, humans do not multi-task, although sometimes concurrent tasks may be juggled. Given the potentially catastrophic consequences, one should not juggle while driving. 

(Or shave, or read the newspaper, or watch movies, or any number of other boneheaded distractions I routinely see people doing. Even when "only" driving, many people do it poorly. I think marked lane violations are more common than speeding, especially around curves.)


----------



## Vertigo (May 6, 2012)

Not entirely true Metryq. Our brain multi-tasks pretty much all the time running our body. Subconscious maybe, but still very much our brain running several tasks at once. As for conscious or active multitasking we are not good at it certainly and I agree there is some dispute as to whether or not we _can_ do it. I have seen  a very simple and convincing demonstration/experiment involving interpreting a reflected mirror image whilst controlling your hand. However, I'm no psychologist so can only comment from a layman's perspective.


----------



## j d worthington (May 6, 2012)

I think part of the problem here is the loose definition of "multi-tasking". It is true that, for instance, one who is used to doing so, can cook, take care of a baby, and talk on the telephone or watch television, etc., all at once, though usually with a diminution of efficiency in one or more of those tasks. In part that is because these are all tasks which come to have a fair degree of "automatic pilot" aspect to them, once learned, which allows the brain to focus specifically on any one of those tasks only when something out of the ordinary occurs: the water starts to boil, the baby starts to cry or picks up something we (even in a largely distracted state) recognizes as hazardous, etc.

On the other hand, genuine "multi-tasking", which requires cognitive skills, assessment of factors, formulation of action, and conscious execution, is largely unattainable because with so much of this, the same areas of the brain are going to be required to be paying attention to and appropriately responding to several types of conflicting information simultaneously. The brain simply isn't evolved to handle that sort of thing; again, in part because it was evolved to insure our responding immediately and with appropriate action to danger in order to survive and propagate... without which, those mechanisms would not be passed on. And, from my understanding of what we've found neurologically, this is a very basic part of the structure of the brain itself, something which has been with us since long before we were human. It is something we share with most mammals, as well as a host of other types of animals, in varying degrees.

There may come a time when we are able to function on this sort of level, but (barring deliberate mucking about with such fundamental factors of brain structure genetically), it is likely to require millions of years and an immeasurably stronger survival pressure than our piddling technological dependencies can bring to bear in order to come about... and if it does, the very fact that it will require such major changes makes the question of whether we would then even be what we would recognize as "human" a rather major point....


----------



## hopewrites (May 6, 2012)

while I agree with your data, I disagree with the conclusions you have drawn from it. The reason I conjecture that we are more able to mulch-task than even one or two generations before us is that when I look at all the demands on a persons attention 50 years ago I find them considerably less than the demands we chose to place on our attention now. Visual stimuli were different, noise levels were lower and of different frequencies, and communication was not as globally instantaneous. The skills and values taught in schools were different, people memorized data that is now databased, and upcoming generations are now taught how to access the databases rather than self-store them inside their heads.
To me these things spell out a change in the way humans cognitively process the world around them. An evolution of the mind. On this path I can see viable multi-tasking within the next hundred (or hundreds) of years rather than the million you propose. 
The impetus to change and grow always comes from within. Mear survival methods are influanced from pressures without and I will agree that they do take millions of years. Take for example entertainment, how much more quickly does one adapt to a form of entertainment that one chooses over a form one does not chose? Games I try to play just because someone pressures me into playing I never learn all the rules to and give up the moment the pressure is off. However, if there is a game I wish to play I learn the rules with rapidity, including all the nuances of verious techniques, and keep up with it until I chose to be done with it.
Because we as human beings are choosing to 'over stimulate' ourselves, we are pushing our adaptability to cope with more and more stimuli thus bringing about an evolution of the mind. Just as body builders constantly push the bounds of what is physically possible, each successive generation is pushing the bounds of what is mentally possible.


----------



## j d worthington (May 6, 2012)

Once again, though, the evidence is that this is not working that way; that when the same (or closely related) brain functions are required for multiple tasks simultaneously, it causes serious diminution in performance on all (or nearly all). Again, where different portions of the brain are affected, the diminution can be lessened, sometimes quite radically so. This is simply because of the way the brain itself functions -- the very nature of its structure. It isn't simply a matter of adaptation, but rather of practically going "back to the drawing board" and getting at the very basics of brain structure and resultant functioning.

Might we find some way around that? That is a possibility, yes; but it is not going to be something we do out of interest, or in a brief span of time, without altering the very core of how a brain develops and works. The example you provide goes toward the role interest (and, possibly, aptitude) plays in learning a task, but it has nothing to do with how capable the brain is of expanding its basic functions; rather, it is acting within very well-understood parameters which have been studied for a very long time.


----------



## hopewrites (May 6, 2012)

Agreed. But I view the epidemic of ADD that is reported to be increasing rapidly among younger and successive generations not as a disease but an adaptation and evolution of the way the brain functions.


----------



## j d worthington (May 6, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> Agreed. But I view the epidemic of ADD that is reported to be increasing rapidly among younger and successive generations not as a disease but an adaptation and evolution of the way the brain functions.


 
Now, that's an interesting interpretation. I, myself, don't see it as a "disease", nor even a disfunction, but as a healthy normal reaction to exposure to too much simultaneous information, far beyond what the brain is structured to accommodate. In other words, to me, this is simply another example of how our technological abilities have outstripped our basic physical (and therefore mental, emotional, and moral) nature.

I do think that we will find methods of coping with this and adapting to it _to a sustainable level_, but the cost is going to be high, and perpetual for a very, _*very*_ long time....


----------



## hopewrites (May 6, 2012)

I find that for myself and for many of the others like me the "suffering" of ADD is more in the social unacceptance of our normality than in the normality itself. 
Comparing my father's school experience to mine and my son's I can track the social evolution that makes it easier for deslexics to learn, not because they way we think and learn changed but because the way others think of us and accept the way our brains work changed. I am glad that my son will have a positive learning environment because understanding and acceptance have both increased.  Just as my father was glad my learning difference would be worked with rather than beat out.

To bring this example back to topic, I hope that the social advancements we have made in understanding and accepting (rather than treating) other learning differences will help more of the stimuli driven changes in human makeup to be embraced and utilized.


----------



## David Evil Overlord (May 11, 2012)

hopewrites said:


> The skills and values taught in schools were different, people memorized data that is now databased, and upcoming generations are now taught how to access the databases rather than self-store them inside their heads.


 
And according to newspapers here, there are now (prototype) glasses that you can use to surf the internet (mutli-tasking mayhem while driving, anyone?), and (prototype) flexible plastic computers the thickness of a human hair, that can be worn like jewellery or clothing.

Easier to surf the databases. Less need to know anything.

The only thing we'll need to memorise is don't wear your Google Goggles in the shower.


----------



## Ursa major (May 11, 2012)

I recall a music teacher - she was teaching general music classes, not helping us learn how to play an instrument - telling us all that it was more important to know how to access information, and to know where it might be found, than remembering it all.

This was in 1973, at the very latest.


----------



## Vertigo (May 11, 2012)

I remember being annoyed about that at university doing electronics. I got so frustrated by the fact that we had to remember loads of formulae and were not allowed reference books in the exams. Now it seems to me that at the university level it should be all about knowning how to do things not remembering formulae that in real life you would just look up when needed. </rant>


----------

