conchis comments on Working Mantras - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 August 2009 10:08PM

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Comment author: conchis 25 August 2009 01:47:28PM *  3 points [-]

Thanks for the explanation.

The idea is that when you are listening to music, you are handicapping yourself by taking some of the attention of the aural modality.

I'd heard something similar from a friend who majored in psychology, but they explained it in terms of verbal processing rather than auditory processing more generally, which is why (they said) music without words wasn't as bad.

I'm not sure whether it's related, but I've also been told by a number of musically-trained friends that they can't work with music at all, because they can't help but analyse it as they listen: for them, listening seems to automatically involve processing work that it doesn't (seem to) for me, precisely because I'm not capable of such processing. (This was part of the reason I was originally wondering about individual variation; the point you make at the end is really interesting in this regard too.)

Comment author: thomblake 26 August 2009 04:15:39PM 0 points [-]

In a possibly-related anecdote, I can't listen to music I've played in Guitar Hero while working, as my mind switches into Guitar Hero mode and all I see are streams of colored buttons.

Comment author: gwern 26 August 2009 04:59:40AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure whether it's related, but I've also been told by a number of musically-trained friends that they can't work with music at all, because they can't help but analyse it as they listen: for them, listening seems to automatically involve processing work that it doesn't (seem to) for me, precisely because I'm not capable of such processing.

I find that very interesting too, since I am in fact the opposite of your musically-trained friends: I am quite rubbish at anything musical, am hard-of-hearing, and have great difficulty analysing music & songs. (In part that's why I listen to so much J-pop: since I often can't understand the lyrics even if they're in English...)