This is a special post for quick takes by Emrik. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Where I say things, but quick. Or at least aspire to.
An abundance of recent empirical data suggest that repeatedly allocating visual attention to task-relevant and/or reward-predicting features in the visual world engenders an attentional bias for these frequently attended stimuli, even when they become task irrelevant and no longer predict reward. In short, attentional selection in the past hinders voluntary control of attention in the present. […] Thus, unlike voluntarily directed attention, involuntary attentional allocation may not be sufficient to engender historically contingent selection biases.
It's sorta unsurprising if you think about it, but I don't think I'm anywhere near having adequately propagated its implications.
Some takeaways:
"Beware of what you attend"
WHEN: You notice that attending to a specific feature of a problem-solving task was surprisingly helpfwl…
THEN: Mentally simulate attending to that feature in a few different problem-solving situations (ie, hook into multiple memory-traces to generalize recall to the relevant class of contexts)
My idionym for specific simple features that narrowly help connect concepts is "isthmuses". I try to pay attention to generalizable isthmuses when I find them (commit to memory).
I interpret this as supporting the idea that voluntary-ish allocation of attention is one of the strongest selection-pressures neuremes adapt to, and thus also one of your primary sources of leverage wrt gradually shaping your brain / self-alignment.
Where I say things, but quick. Or at least aspire to.