Short Attention Spans

A rant

A prophetic title song

This is how the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper¹; that is, through short attention spans².

Short attention spans that let people forget about horrible events like COVID-19, thus booking cruises—cruise liners are perfect isolated places for diseases to break out—immediately after the pandemic was over.

Short attention spans that make people forget about how horrible Trump’s first term actually was, and therefore immediately re-elect him if something relatively minor³ like inflation bothers them.

The neuroscientist Erik Hoel recently released a paper explaining—nay, proving—that LLMs cannot be conscious because they have no capacity to learn. Based on that assumption, about half of the US population—and considerable percentages in other countries—are not conscious. It would explain a lot.

Also, because of such intense short attention spans, people can be influenced much easier. Quickly distracted from bad policies, easily manipulated into the next conspiracy nonsense⁴. In comparison, the proverbial squirrels have much better long-term planning⁵.

On top of that, AI chatbots and LLMs are fuelling the short attention span disorder even further. No need to fuly write your email, text, or social media post yourself, as ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude will happily finish it for you. It’s so bad that LLMs are modifying people’s speech patterns.

So what to do? As is often the case, Rush—by way of the late, great Neil Peart’s lyrics—was prophetic and provides some insight:

Cities full of hatred

Fear and lies

Withered hearts

And cruel, tormented eyes

Scheming demons

Dressed in kingly guise

Beating down the multitude

And scoffing at the wise

(The prophetic part, just ask the citizens of Minneapolis/St. Paul.)

Can’t we find

The minds that made us strong

Can’t we learn

To feel what’s right and wrong

[…]

Can’t we find the minds

To lead us closer to the heart

—“A Farewell to Kings” by Rush (from the same-titled album)

A grey squirrel caching food in a burrow

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Author’s note: a short rant. Sometimes you have to get it off your chest. Many thanks for indulging me!

1. The final to lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men;

2. To be absolutely clear: I’m not blaming people suffering from ADHD, but rather those too lazy or stupid (or both) to develop even a smidgen of intellectual curiosity;

3. Minor in comparison to climate change, pollution, and environmental degradation, to mention but a few;

4. I almost typed ‘conspiracy theory’, but then quickly determined that it’s not worth that moniker;

5. Just check all the food they’ve accumulated in their burrows to get through the winter;