Category: Meditation

14 random thoughts on attention: Attention is finite, attention is relationship based, attention is not a commodity…

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention – Herbert Simon

Some thoughts on attention, since we talk oh so often about its importance in crypto investing:

1. A user’s attention is finite BUT — though a day is fixed at 24 hours, total attention time can increase with technological innovation and social change. Coffee — you could argue its spread created a massive net increase in society’s available attention.

Examples of tech innovation: faster internet speeds = more time for internet attention; airpods = greater ability to divide attention aka “multitask” (washing dishes while listening to All-In is increasing available attention). I guess saving time = increasing available attention.

Example of social change: how it’s increasingly common for people to use phones during dinner. Or having airpods in while interacting in public (even if sometimes perceived as obnoxious). Or rise in solo living, solo travel, all increasing available attention.

2. An influencer is an attention battery — they represent accumulated attention; roughly synonymous with “reputation” and “brand”. Anything Mr. Beast does is likely to attract peoples’ attention, but if he releases 50 extremely boring videos, attention will decline. And like a battery, he must then make good content to “recharge” his battery. Perhaps like batteries there is also a natural lifecycle and declining recharge capacity over time…

3. Attention leads to mindshare, and mindshare leads to market share

4. Intelligence is upstream of attention in the sense that intelligence influences how you pay attention. You can more easily capture a child’s attention than an adult’s, or an amateur’s attention than an expert in a given subject. This does not apply to all forms of attention, eg, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, you’re likely to pay attention when someone near you screams

5. Emotion is downstream of attention in the sense that you tend to have an emotional reaction after you’ve attended to something. Yet the stronger the emotion, the more likely you are to continue paying attention. So there is a feedback loop (same for #4). Attention + feedback loops is another interesting topics (briefly addressed below)

6. Attention is an investment. It has an expected ROI. It can be understood in financial terms. Notice how often we say “pay attention“. Attention has a cost, and a return. Your (paid) attention can achieve a positive ROI (such as getting your desired job because you prepared hard for it) but it can also have a negative ROI (don’t pay attention to your partner and they may very well find someone who does).

7. Attention is NOT a commodity. Each person can provide many kinds of attention, with different value, in different contexts. Tired-end-of-a-long-day attention is not the same as drinking-morning-coffee-after-8-hours-of-sleep attention. For the most part, one person’s attention is not interchangeable with another’s. An excited foreign visitor in SF pays far more attention to the Golden  Gate Bridge than a local tech worker on their 200th morning commute.

8. Attention is relationship based (in both a p2p and p2object sense). A mother’s attention to her baby differs vastly from a receptionist’s attention to a walk-in customer. The attention you pay to your favorite TV show differs vastly from the attention you pay to a new piece of music. Or is context the better word here? Or both…

9. Curation is concentrated attention — the act of curating is the art of filtering and directing attention

10. Developed markets are approaching attention saturation — just like average income levels, countries like America and Japan are squarely in the diminishing marginal returns of first world attention. Developing markets, meanwhile, have much more upside for capturing and harvesting aggregate attention.

11. Attention is a feedback loop — both externally and internally. The more attention you pay to others, the more attention you are likely to receive from them in return. The more attention you pay to certain things, the more likely you will receive intrinsic rewards (or costs). Substance addiction is an example of negative attention feedback loops. Achieving career goals is an example of positive attention feedback loops. Same with friends and enemies. Again the theme of attention-as-investment…

12. Attention is Lindy — people, events, objects that have received the most attention in the past, are likely to continue receiving the most attention in the future. The Pyramids, the Bible, Napoleon, the Godfather movies…

13. Attention is contagious — viral moments, mob behavior, fomo — these are examples of attention contagion. Celebrities, marketers, politicians all intuitively understand this.

14. Attention is probabilistic — there’s no guarantee you can get someone’s attention, and even when you have it, you likely don’t have 100% of it (the amount you have is constantly changing)

Some random ass questions

What’s the relationship between attention and timing? Is good timing the “buying low and selling high” of attention?

Is love the best form of attention? This tweet is thought provoking: The framing of “Attention Economy” is limiting. I believe we live in a Love Economy. People now want to spend their time, money, and attention on things they love, not simply things that grab their attention.

What is the relationship between attention and time? Is attention applied time? Is attention:time like electricity:fossil fuels?

How will attention evolve? A thought provoking thread:  https://x.com/anuatluru/status/1803089607560429843?s=46

Thanks for spending your attention here. Hope it had a somewhat positive ROI :) I can sometimes be found paying attention on X.

“But you’re still carrying her” – Alan Watts

Monks River
Recently heard this great parable as told by Alan Watts:

—

It’s like the story of the two Zen monks who were crossing the river, and the ford was very deep because of the flood.

And there was a girl trying to get across, and one of the monks immediately picked her up, and carried her across.

Put her down on the other side, and then the monks went one way and she went another.

And the other monk, who had been in a kind of embarrassed silence and which he finally broke, he said, “You realize that you broke a monastic rule by touching and picking up a woman like that?”

And he replied, “Oh, but I left her on the other side of the river, and you’re still carrying her!”

—

Transcript: https://alanwatts.org/transcripts/the-veil-of-thoughts
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYXn8CClPmc

Some meditation advice from an experienced meditator

I was struck by this HN comment (source):

I have been practicing meditation for 15 years, sometimes in batch of 100 hours.

The more I practice, the more the time slows down. Not just while meditating, but after the fact as well. Although it fluctuates and I’m not back to my kid self, it feels that I have tremendously more time now than a few years ago.

I suspect that it’s tied to how much present you manage to be.

When you are a kid, you are deeply immersed in whatever you are doing, and less and less so after that, especially in our age of distractions, multitasking, and intellectual work loads.

I think that the more you are immersed in the daily boring stuff, like just walking, doing chores, or taking your shower, the more you register the time you spend doing said activity, and the time seems to pass slowly.

In fact, I am sometimes under the impression my minutes, not just feel longer, but actually contain more, because I do so many things and then looking at the clock, it hasn’t moved much. This sensation increases when I meditate a lot.

I emailed the writer. I was struck again by his reply, some of which I’m sharing verbatim below (with his permission):

—

Meditation is uninteresting repetition, again and again, no matter the technique. It’s only natural to find it uneasy.

This is not a race. It’s the opposite of a race. The faster you try to go, the slower you will progress. Yet efforts will lead to results. You have to be motivated without avidity, and it’s not an easy balance to find.

There is a huge difference in effects, between a casual practice (a few minutes, some of the days) and a robust practice (long sessions every day).

It’s a long term work. It’s, in fact, a life work. Our teacher jokes that at the center, we are at “Vipassana Kindergarden”. We are just beginning. Now we have to carry on and on. Half of the secret of success is simply showing up, every day.

—

Meditation: How to tell if you’re beginner, intermediate, or advanced

Ok, forgive me for the clickbait-y title. But that was my reaction as I read the below passage:

The eighth-century Buddhist adept Vimalamitra described three stages of mastery in meditation and how thinking appears in each. The first is like meeting a person you already know; you simply recognize each thought as it arises in consciousness, without confusion. The second is like a snake tied in a knot; each thought, whatever its content, simply unravels on its own. In the third, thoughts become like thieves entering an empty house; even the possibility of being distracted has disappeared. – Sam Harris, Waking Up

I appreciate reading such clarity in a practice (meditation) within a tradition (Buddhism) where there often isn’t much. I think about the passage often. Like thieves entering an empty house…

11 excerpts from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse: “Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else”

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

I recently finished Siddhartha [Kindle] by Hermann Hesse and highly recommend the book. It’s a fast and flowing read and a powerful story, especially if you’re into Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. Siddhartha is the story of a man, a seeker of wisdom and truth, whose life parallels that of Gautama, the original Buddha. Hermann Hesse has a wonderful and unique writing style and I wanted to share some of my favorite excerpts from the book.

**

“Siddhartha,” he said, “why are you waiting?”
“You know why.”
“Will you go on standing and waiting until it is day, noon, evening?”
“I will stand and wait.”
“You will grow tired, Siddhartha.”
“I will grow tired.”
“You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.”
“I will not fall asleep.”
“You will die, Siddhartha.”
“I will die.”

The Brahman fell silent and remained silent for so long that the stars in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, ‘ere the silence was broken. Silent and motionless stood the son with his arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the stars traced their paths in the sky.

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else…Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

“Govinda,” Siddhartha spoke to his friend. “Govinda, my dear, come with me under the Banyan tree, let’s practise meditation.”

…this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama

“What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body? What is fasting? What is holding one’s breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk…”

He soon saw that Siddhartha knew little about rice and wool, shipping and trade, but that he acted in a fortunate manner, and that Siddhartha surpassed him, the merchant, in calmness and equanimity, and in the art of listening and deeply understanding previously unknown people.

Slowly, like humidity entering the dying stem of a tree, filling it slowly and making it rot, the world and sloth had entered Siddhartha’s soul, slowly it filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, put it to sleep.

“Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. But others, a few, are like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course.”

“It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”