this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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No Stupid Questions
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There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!
Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.
- ex. How do I change oil
- ex. How to tie shoes
- ex. Can you cry underwater?
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!
Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice ๐.
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Most areas of our brain can only do 1 task at a time. If you try and do more, it flips rapidly between them. Basically, you would "watch" vaguely 30-50% of each show, with your brain trying to fill in the gaps.
Interestingly, you can do 2 tasks that don't share significant resources. This is how you can both drive a car and listen to a podcast. It's also why you suddenly need to turn down the music when you need to navigate, or park. Those require use of general cognition, which the music/podcast was using.
An interesting example of this is time keeping. Some people can talk and keep an accurate mental timer. However they will lose track when looking at images. Others will be the reverse, or something different.
It turns out that humans don't have a consistent time keeping mental circuit. We hijack other systems. If you "hear" the time passing, you will struggle to also hear someone talking without issues. If you visualise a clock, you can talk, but your visual cognition is now occupied.
Wow, this is really interesting, thanks for the summation.
If I wanted to read more (say entry level stuff), would you have a recommendation?
Unfortunately, I don't have any links to hand. It's mostly pop sci level stuff I've picked up from various places.
The time one I want to say was Richard Feynman. Though an informal experiment on fellow professors in the lunch room. Possibly from his autobiography, which is an excellent read either way.
Well, Feynman's a start anyway. Thanks!