Imagine eleven people each have a message that they think should get 10% of a group’s attention. They aren’t being crazy selfish and attention-seeking—just on average a little over-emphasizing the importance of their own information. So adding up all the message importances as rated by their owners, it gets to a little over one.
Now the people get to share their message with some meta-information about its importance—for instance, they can say it more or less loudly.
What happens?
Lets say they all say it at a loudness that corresponds to ‘should get 10% of the attention’. The listeners then divide their attention between the messages, and each one gets 9% of the attention.
The speakers realize they spoke a bit too quietly for the importance of their message, and turn up the volume.
But the next time, they find that the ambient volume has increased, and their new volume again only gets them 9% of the attention. So they increase it again.
Eventually, everyone is shouting as loud as they can, just to get what seems like a rightful look in.
I see this pattern in lots of places. Too many emails titled ‘Important’, too many paragraphs beginning ‘One key thing to remember...’. Loudspeakers trying to breach travelers’ headphones with important advisories. Todo lists forever longer than you can possibly do, and marked with things like ‘NO REALLY DO THIS ONE’… Warning labels and ‘open this immediately’ signs. Perhaps even the length of writing: an author emphasizes with length what they think will be ignored, but then other stuff will be ignored, so they emphasize those too, not coming to terms with limited attention of reader. The proliferation of objects that should be findable. Literal speaking in crowds.
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The shouting equilibrium
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Imagine eleven people each have a message that they think should get 10% of a group’s attention. They aren’t being crazy selfish and attention-seeking—just on average a little over-emphasizing the importance of their own information. So adding up all the message importances as rated by their owners, it gets to a little over one.
Now the people get to share their message with some meta-information about its importance—for instance, they can say it more or less loudly.
What happens?
Lets say they all say it at a loudness that corresponds to ‘should get 10% of the attention’. The listeners then divide their attention between the messages, and each one gets 9% of the attention.
The speakers realize they spoke a bit too quietly for the importance of their message, and turn up the volume.
But the next time, they find that the ambient volume has increased, and their new volume again only gets them 9% of the attention. So they increase it again.
Eventually, everyone is shouting as loud as they can, just to get what seems like a rightful look in.
I see this pattern in lots of places. Too many emails titled ‘Important’, too many paragraphs beginning ‘One key thing to remember...’. Loudspeakers trying to breach travelers’ headphones with important advisories. Todo lists forever longer than you can possibly do, and marked with things like ‘NO REALLY DO THIS ONE’… Warning labels and ‘open this immediately’ signs. Perhaps even the length of writing: an author emphasizes with length what they think will be ignored, but then other stuff will be ignored, so they emphasize those too, not coming to terms with limited attention of reader. The proliferation of objects that should be findable. Literal speaking in crowds.
Thanks for reading world spirit sock puppet! Subscribe for free if you want to receive new posts and/or encourage me: