That table also has order-of-magnitude variations for effect sizes across different studies (if I interpret it correctly, which I may not?) So now I'm confused. I do think that the core issue may be that "digital technology" is just too broad a category, and also individual differences may be key?

I just looked at the source of this statistic and it's weird. Their table also shows technology use has the same effect size as perceived weight. If they had picked that comparison instead of "potatoes" it would make the opposite rhetorical point, I think. (1/2) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wearing glasses and having a bike both had huge effects when I was a teen! (Not sure about potatoes, though.)

Mental programming of spatial sequences in working memory in the macaque frontal cortex doi.org/10.1126/scie...#neuroscience

Thank you, that metaphor actually is helpful for me. I think I have a better idea where you're coming from.

I'm trying in good faith to understand what is a very different perspective than my own. For me, it's a bit like hearing an author not want to be in a library, or a website not wanting to show up in search results. But I respect that people have wildly different (and reasonable) views on this.

I mean, yes I can imagine others, but if I gave a long thread of all the possibilities, it would be a bit tedious? I certainly agree that silently changing terms under authors' noses isn't good.

This is nitpicking, of course, but making axioms explicit is part of formality. A fun aside could be pointing out that without transitivity, sorting lists with repeated elements may be possible! E.g., in the game of rock-paper-scissors, the list (rock, paper, scissors, rock) is perfectly sorted!

The sorted list example is neat! But the "formal" proof is still missing some steps. In particular, there's a key, unmentioned axiom that if a < b and b < c, then a < c. This is used in step 5, but not referenced explicitly. I think it would help to expand step 5 making this explicit.

A lot of people find these systems worthwhile. 24% of the US population aged 18-64 used generative AI at least once a week in August. More than 10% of workers use it every day. See: static1.squarespace.com/static/60832...