
The power of ignoring - eplanit
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/the-incredible-power-of-ignoring-everything/
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kazinator
It's very easy not to think of a polar bear; it's hard to enter into a state
of mind whereby you can _guarantee_ that you will not think of a polar bear
for the next N minutes. If you drop the guarantee part, and make it a soft
requirement, then it's easy: just think of something else and forget about
polar bears. Chances are you won't accidentally think of a polar bear within N
minutes.

"Worse is better" makes it possible: relax the requirements, get the job done.

If you try to guarantee that you don't think of a polar bear, that is
oxymoronic, because to concentrate on not thinking of a polar bear, you have
to continuously hold a polar bear symbol in your consciousness, which means
you're doing nothing but thinking of a polar bear.

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kazinator
This just seems completely wrongheaded.

There is no difference between looking for items which match some criteria,
and looking for items which do not.

The classification type looks like a big red herring.

It is a problem of exhaustively partitioning a set of items into two classes.
"Retain" and "reject" are just arbitrary labels for these classes, which might
as well be "A" and "B" or whatever else.

Whether it is easier to calculate class A or B depends entirely on the
statistical properties of the specific input relative to the complexity of the
criteria for determining class membership in A versus B.

For instance, suppose membership in A means satisfying the correct attribute
values in fifty different properties. Now suppose that most of the objects in
the input set satisfy the test in 49 properties, failing only in one. Only a
few objects satisfy all 50 properties with the correct attributes. Then the
task will be hard, and it will be equally hard whether the focus is to
identify B's or A's, because either way it is a _separation_ of A's from B's.

If you give me a jar of beans, where all are white, but about six or seven are
black, I can easily give you all the white ones, or all the black ones. Either
way I pick out the black ones. Then I have them separated and I just give you
whichever set you asked for. If the mix is 50/50, it's a lot more work,
whether you ask for black or white.

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seeing

      The study suggests that the ability to pay attention to
      something is driven by inhibition.
    

This is controversial.

Inhibition sounds like the opposite of openness, and openness is considered
vitally important to being a good programmer according to
[http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/programmers-are-a-
tin...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/11/programmers-are-a-tiny-bit-
introverted-but-otherwise-agreeable/)

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_0ffh
Nope. Inhibition is about attention. Openness is about judgement.

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blakesterz
Yeah, seems like it's one of those words that psychologists use differently
than the rest of us? At least feels like I'd use "Inhibition" differently...
"the brain’s ability to suppress distractions -- what psychologists call
“inhibition” "

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_0ffh
Neuroscientists use the word "inhibition" for the situation when an
excited/activated neuron suppresses the excitation of another neuron. An
inhibitory connection is like a negatively weighted connection in an ANN. That
seems similar in spirit to the psychological use. Yeah, context is important.

