At one point in time, I think mathematics students picked a specialty based on their interests, but also it came down to what they were exposed to, problems they ran across in life, or even what their Ph.D. advisor studied. But now, it seems there's so much interesting things out there. Just this week I watched videos on p-adics, entropy, read articles about neural network interpretability, and engaged with "little" math puzzles on a Facebook page. Not to mention all the non-math rabbit holes I explored, that is until I ran across the next one. It feels impossible for me to delve deep into anything at this point or make a choice.
This, along with other experiences, triggered a growing realization that the internet is not very good for us, or at least me, and there might be much we can do to mitigate that, besides reducing/avoiding. I found myself overloaded, preferring distractions and dopamine hits and shirking responsibilities. I got worse sleep; my memory, processing, and now even my decision making skills have been overloaded and rendered useless.
I knew about the harm, abstractly, but always dismissed it because I wanted to believe that there were healthy ways to use the internet, and as this new medium was relatively new, we were still figuring it out. Load stimulates growth, so I assumed higher load = more growth, ignoring that excessive load reinforces poor form and causes injury.
You know it seems a bit silly -- how can an abundance of options cause harm? But paradoxically it's true -- the exposure to all this information and options encourages dilly-dallying and non-commitment. I feel like maybe we underestimate how much choices are actually made for us in life, and undervalue the positive effects of that. After all, it often takes lighting a fire under our collective asses to make us act.
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