Comment author: letter7 01 July 2013 08:54:06PM 14 points [-]

There's something that happens to me with an alarming frequency, something that I almost never (or don't remember) see being referenced (and thus I don't know the proper name). I'm talking about that effect when I'm reading a text (any kind of text, textbook, blog, forum text) and suddenly I discover that two minutes passed and I advanced six lines in the text, but I just have no idea of what I read. It's like a time blackhole, and now I have to re-read it.

Sometimes it also happens in a less alarming way, but still bad: for instance, when I'm reading something that is deliberately teaching me an important piece of knowledge (as in, I already know whathever is in this text IS important) I happen to go through it without questioning anything, just "accepting" it and a few moments later it suddenly comes down on me when I'm ahead: "Wait... what, did he just say 2 pages ago that thermal radiation does NOT need matter to propagate?" and I have again to go back and check that I was not crazy.

While I don't know the name of this effect, I have asked some acquantainces of mine about that, while some agreed that they have it others didn't. I would like very much to eliminate this flaw, anybody knows what I could do to train myself not to do it or at least the correct name so I can research more about it?

Comment author: polutropon 06 July 2013 10:01:20PM 5 points [-]

Are you sleep deprived? This kind of attention lapse sounds like the calling card of a microsleep.

Comment author: polutropon 06 July 2013 08:11:53PM 3 points [-]

Hello again, Less Wrong! I'm not entirely new — I've been lurking since at least 2010 and I had an account for a while, but since that I've let that one lie fallow for almost two years now I thought I'd start afresh.

I'm a college senior, studying cognitive psychology with a focus on irrationality / heuristics and biases. In a couple of months I'll be starting my year-long senior thesis, which I'm currently looking for a specific topic for. I'm also a novice Python programmer and a dabbler in nootropics.

I'll be trying to avoid spending too unproductive time on LW ("insight porn" really is a great description, and I've learned to be wary of being excessively cerebral), but here I am again.

Comment author: polutropon 06 July 2013 07:21:10PM 16 points [-]

This seems to me to be a permutation of the sunk cost fallacy. If you retrace your steps, you feel as though you're wasting the effort you took to get there in the first place, even though it's already spent and now it makes sense to go back again.

I share the intuition, by the way.