You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Lumifer comments on What resources have increasing marginal utility? - Less Wrong Discussion

36 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 14 June 2014 03:43AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (63)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 June 2014 04:50:04AM 14 points [-]

I am not sure about the attention example, there looks to be an issue with units. For example, if we think in terms of percentages, going from juggling 10 things to 9 gives ~11% more attention to the nine remaining things. Going from 2 things to 1 gives 100% more attention to the remaining single. And that's just math, not increasing marginal utility.

And if we're talking about resources to be amassed by societies, pretty much anything with a network effect qualifies.

Comment author: lfghjkl 15 June 2014 12:25:29AM 3 points [-]

Going from 2 things to 1 gives 100% more attention to the remaining single.

The effect will be much higher than that:

Because the brain cannot fully focus when multitasking, people take longer to complete tasks and are predisposed to error. When people attempt to complete many tasks at one time, “or [alternate] rapidly between them, errors go way up and it takes far longer—often double the time or more—to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially,” states Meyer.[9] This is largely because “the brain is compelled to restart and refocus”.[10] A study by Meyer and David Kieras found that in the interim between each exchange, the brain makes no progress whatsoever. Therefore, multitasking people not only perform each task less suitably, but lose time in the process.

Source.

So, by focusing your attention on a single task instead of trying to do two at the same time you'll be done with that task in less than a quarter of the time (and not half as one would expect).