Life Interrupted 406
sch7572 writes "Seattle Times carried this story which may be of interest to those addicted to checking Slashdot for new stories every minute. Scientists are concerned that the Information Age is nurturing 'cognitive overload,' an umbrella term for the malaise people feel as a result of distraction, stress, multitasking, and data congestion related to increasingly sophisticated technologies. People multitask because it is expected, encouraged, and considered vital, yet cognitive scientist David Meyer reports that truly effective multitasking is beyond people's capabilities."
Arrrrrgggg! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:2)
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:2, Insightful)
"So far, she's found that the average employee switches tasks every three minutes, is interrupted every two minutes and has a maximum focus stretch of 12 minutes."
Well I guess maybe the article took more than 3
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:5, Insightful)
This leaves me with two
1) I will then focus all my attention on this thread until such time as I deem the task complete
or
2) As I focus myself on this threa . . . Oh look a new thingy to work on!
This leads me to wonder if ADD / ADHD are actually coping mechanisms of the human mind? It kind of makes sense, as our brains are programmed for task switching at an early age with most kids being babysat by the TV and commercials being 30 seconds in length. Anybody know how long the feature program is between commercial breaks? 12 minutes perhaps?
-nB
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Funny)
Now, if only I didn't have to spend 4 minutes and 30 seconds hunting for the remote control...
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Insightful)
That is why I hate TV. If you took the commercials out of commercial TV it would be a big improvement to even the worst shows.
My ADD son told me this joke... (Score:5, Funny)
Q: "How many ADD kids does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A: "Let's go ride bikes."
Oh, that's why. (Score:3, Insightful)
That explains why I can focus for long periods of time, and in fact it seems that unlike everyone else, I have a hard time multitasking.
I preferred public television as a child.
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Funny)
Did you see how long that thing was ???!!
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Funny)
That's ludicrous! I don't see how you can say that when--SQUIRREL!
Re:Arrrrrgggg! (Score:3, Funny)
I think I saw that on MacGuyver once
Terminal Ennui (Score:4, Insightful)
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Post (Score:4, Funny)
Holy crap! This guy reads TFA! Mod him up!
UP????? (Score:3, Funny)
The article... (Score:5, Funny)
Nonsense! (Score:4, Funny)
At least, I assume that's what the article says - I would have RTFA, but then I might miss the next comment posted here.
Re:The article... (Score:2)
I love technology, but it definately has some kind of effect on you (I don't know if it's good or bad), for example as of recently I can no longer sit and watch television, I get anxious sitting there trying to watch it, or I fall asleep. The only
Re:The article... (Score:2)
Re:The article... (Score:2)
Heh - I do this too. I have the added bonus of my wife thinking I work too hard as a result. In reality I think I am more anxious about the "stress relief sessions" she gives to help out or I fall asleep waiting for them.
Man I hate to rock the boat on this gig.
Psh (Score:3, Funny)
My employer should meet David Meyer (Score:2, Insightful)
I wish he had some time to come over and talk to my employers.
Kind of reminds me of the current physics debate. (Score:2)
For my opinion, check my sig.
Re:Kind of reminds me of the current physics debat (Score:2, Funny)
that's just astro-physicist speak for "I bet you a cup of coffee that you can't write a p2p client in less than 5 lines of perl"
Re:At least that has grounding! (Score:2)
Of course, very few human beings ever try IFR instruction, must less complete it.
sPh
Re:At least that has grounding! (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to sing a song while you type something completely unrelated and then tell me what the guy on TV was saying while you were doing it.
It's called Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Not yet, but I think eventually it might not be beyond our capabilities, just like learning how to produce heat from wood, and now from splitting atoms.
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:2)
For example, a corporation wants multitaskers, hires potential multitaskers, fires incompetents. After several cleanups, there's a concentration of multitaskers at that corporation.
They start chatting at the watercooler, and soon after are dating, get married, and have multitasking children, and so on.
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Do multitaskers have more children? (Score:2)
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:2)
I had a friend in highschool that could take notes with his right hand, write his fictional stories with his left and hold a conversation.
substitute teachers or new classes were great fun, the teacher trying to catch him screwing off would ask him a question, without even pausing he would give the correct answer, and his notes were a perfect transcript of the lesson from the words the teacher said, to questions asked and what was on the
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
As a comparison I will give you another example - I do not know a single person who is capable of simultaneously doing the mathematical models of two fundamentally different problems in different subject matter fields at the same time (and I know some very good mathematicians). Same for similar activities in physics, same for high efficiency algorithms and other high level (non-mundane) programming, so on so fourth. I do not think that it is possible to train in this. There are tasks where the human brain works at the limit of its capacity and there is no way anyone in his sane mind can multitask while doing them.
Re:It's called Evolution (Score:3, Insightful)
We can evolve to do that iff:
I'd say it's doubtful that all three are true.
data congestion (Score:5, Funny)
Re:data congestion (Score:2, Funny)
No To Interruptions (Score:5, Interesting)
For a while now I've been anti-interruption. I shun any kind of unsolicited alert about events such as new email arriving, a friend signing on to an IM network or the phone ringing. I find I enjoy activities a lot more now that I can see them through to completion without beeping and flashing alerts interrupting me at arbitrary moments.
Re:No To Interruptions (Score:2)
Well, obviously there are certain alerts which I can't supress for a good reason. I don't ignore my phone ringing, I configure it so that it will not ring. It's the silly, unimportant alerts such as friends saying "hi r u dere?" that I supress.
I also wouldn't ignore someone who walked into the room and spoke to me, although I might get angry with them if they don't actually have anything important to say. In the scenario you gave, I could probably take the airplane with me. ;)
Really? (Score:2)
Really? I can usually handle walking, chewing gum, talking and breathing all at once pretty well.
Re:Really? (Score:2)
Sure it is, anybody can multitask (Score:4, Funny)
But all those moms in SUVs with cell phones glued to their ear while they whack their kids scare me!
Re:Sure it is, anybody can multitask (Score:2)
Its true.... I've experienced it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now as a software engineer I try to work on only one thing at a time. If I try to do more than that then all of my efforts fall behind. If I can focus on one task though, it gets done and done right.
Re:Its true.... I've experienced it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its true.... I've experienced it. (Score:2)
Ah, well, guess I'm not as good at it as I thought I was - which proves the parent poster's point!
Re:Its true.... I've experienced it. (Score:2)
It's obvious if you think about it (Score:2)
I find it easier to go into my cave and code for 18 hours straight than to answer phones for three or four hours.
So what do we do? (Score:4, Interesting)
... said the addict (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of us probably feel that way, but the larger question is why do we want to multitask so much, and when we do multitask are we actually losing something in the process? Looking back on the time in my life before I became jacked in to the Net (my teens and early 20s), I realize that I spent a lot more time actually *thinking deeply* about things than I do now. These days I am aware of a broad range of interesting and useful information,
RTFA (You Are A Crack Addict) (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell me, do you feel down, or groggy, or in any way sad, when you do not monitor your couple of dozen sites? What happens when you go for a day or two without internet access? These would be withdrawal symptoms.
So, you show a prime example of the problem -- no, in fact your are the very epidome. You think you are using every conceivable second of your life to the fullest. You have this push to experience everything immediately and constantly. But for what reason? Why do they have to all occur simultaneously? More importantly, how did you come about the decision that doing only one thing at a time is "complete waste of precious time"!?
Logically following your views to their conclusion would mean that the moment you focus on anything it becomes a waste of time. This is so absolutely flawed, I am now speechless.
Please take an objective view of yourself, and discover what your motives (if any) are for feeling the way you do. Then please respond and tell me how they are not in any way related to your dopamine addiction.
Re:RTFA (You Are A Crack Addict) (Score:4, Interesting)
1) 24 hours in the day, approx 8 of which are downtime/sleep. Most of us also portion out 9 or so to earning our keep, and a couple hours get lost due to necessary evils (travel, taking a breather, movement in general). That usually leaves about 5 hours of time during which you can do your own thing. You can push that figure upwards (scrape off hours of sleep, skip work, arrange things so that your wasted couple of hours are more like 30 minutes). However, when you think about it, 5 hours really isn't that long a time to do much during the week.
2) Multiple interests. Myself, I love to play music (piano, clarinet, guitar -- still learning the last one), play video games (PC, PS2), program applications, maintain my network, watch some TV shows, etc. Not the least of those interests is keeping up with friends and going out to do things with them. Now, of course there is the whole 'priority' thing going on here of which I want to do more, but regardless, the list is fairly expansive.
These two things lead to a problem. How do I do as many things as I want to do in the limited time that I have available? It's true that my 'weekday' listing only allows roughly 5 hours of free time to myself, and that it ignores the roughly 14 hours I get on a weekend day, it still shows that the time that I have available to me to do all the things I want to do is limited. Some things take more time than I can allow for on a weekday. Some things that I want to do are low priority because they're new and atypical, yet I still really want to do them.
This can be summed up very easily in a bastardized phrase I learned from Economics. Limited Resources for Unlimited Wants. I want to do far more than I have time for, if I were to do them back to back. As some of those wants are even time dependant (keeping up with friends is a good one for that), if those are not done, then the opportunity is lost. The only answer that I can come up with is multitasking. Be it combining tasks into one (a simple method) or doing multiple tasks at once (true multitasking), that seems to me to be the only way to attend to as many of the wants as I can for the given time period.
Even with multitasking, I know I will not have time for everything I want to do, but at least I will be able to do more of them and not miss out on time-dependant tasks. I personally do not see this view as delusional or logically flawed. My approach to the problem may be different than the one you may choose, but it is still valid.
P.S. Dispite being a different individual than the parent of your post, while doing one thing at a time is not (to me) a 'complete waste of precious time', it is not using that time to it's fullest, either. If you have the capacity to do multiple things at once, and you do not do that, it can be viewed as wasting time.
I have taken offense. (Score:3)
Please show me specific examples.
Also, as for my "uninformed kind", you are grossly mistaken. I have been reading and posting to slashdot much longer than you have. Although I hate to compare UID, I will in do so in this case.
One more thing... How can you doubt that I read the article? I stated ver
Re:RTFA (You Are A Crack Addict) (Score:3, Insightful)
You and I must be reading different slashdots.
Re:So what do we do? (Score:4, Insightful)
Note he said effective multitasking (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect this is where the problem lies. The difference between "effective multitasking" and "bumming on the internet" is the crucial point. Both are attempting jumping from one task to another, the first for a pupose say doing your job. The second doesnt have a purpose or a structure so it has no more purpose than doing it itself.
It is almost as if you are addicted to performing a task (browsing the internet) and the performing of the task becomes the goal, instead of working towards, something at the end.
Net Online Anime Gallery's [sharkfire.net]
Re:Note he said effective multitasking (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I don't know about you... (Score:2)
Protect Your Time (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, multitasking -- a computing term that involves doing, or trying to do, more than one thing at once -- has cemented itself into our daily lives and is intensely studied. Research has shown it to be consistently counterproductive, often foolish, unhealthy in the long run, and in the case of gabbing on the cell phone while driving, relatively dangerous. Yet it is also expected, encouraged and basically essential.
Amen. Now we need the actual studies so that we can cite them for our bosses and clients so they can stop expecting it.
Once you have some sympathy from your PHB: The best defense, in this case, is a good offense. Declare office hours. Partition your time into usable, contiguous chunks dedicated to single tasks, and stick to the plan. You'll be glad you did.
Multitasking is the ONLY way (Score:2)
Re:Multitasking is the ONLY way (Score:2)
That would be emulated multi-tasking.
Kind of like computers
Re:Multitasking is the ONLY way (Score:2)
I don't think that the point is that we can't perform multiple tasks at the same instant. I think the article was more trying to suggest that the context-switching necessary for a human to perform "pre-emptive multitasking" as a modern operating system does is not only slow but also quite stressful and tiring. Computers can do it in a fraction of a second, but humans take far longer.
(This is ignoring processes which are more-or-less instinctive, such as walking.)
Distinguishing. (Score:2)
And here I sit, ghosting a PC, installing Panther on a laptop, reading Slashdot, and nibbling at some code (oops, and talking on the phone because it just rang as I was typing this). So am I distracted and not getting anything done, or am I multitasking?
A great article, very much worth the read.
Older people (Score:5, Interesting)
The young techno-elite grew (and are growing) up immersed in this sea of information, and are adapting to it. The older generations, having grown up in a much slower-paced environment, have difficulty adapting to the rapid change in the information channels available to them.
Personally, I love having this information available. I crave it. I'm constantly aware of the state of the world around me. When something of note happens to one of my friends, that knowledge circulates throughout our social circle almost immediately.
For anyone who's read Snow Crash, there are people referred to as "Gargoyles." They are connected to the net 100% of the time, interacting with it through wearable computing and visual overlays, streaming and feeding information as fast as possible concurrently with their physical life.
The idea might scare some people, but I find it fascinating.
I suppose it's simply that older people, not being used to this mass of information, are not ready to cope with the fact that most information is useless. Part of the ability to accept the input is the ability to filter the wheat from the chaff.
I read slashdot several times a day, but I don't read every comment or every article. I read the ones that will be useful to me in some way. I'm connected to the net most of the time, but I ignore an incoming IM if I'm busy doing something else.
People who aren't used to this environment have trouble ingoring things. You know the type. People who insist on answering the phone no matter how busy they are at that moment. People who check their email immediately whenever they reveive a "new mail" notification. These people can't cope with the available information, and are overwhelmed by it.
Re:Older people (Score:5, Insightful)
However, speaking (sadly enough) as a member of the "older generation" who actually implmented some of the changes in technology and communication you discuss in the far-distant 1980s and 90s, let me offer this: I used to work in industrial facilities designed and built in the 1920-1940 time period. Along with my "young people", "progressive" coworkers I spent a lot of time, effort, and money "upgrading" these facilities to what we considered "better" technology. All fully computerized of course.
Looking back on what we did, I now realize that those engineers from the 1940s were a lot smarter than we were, and thought about the problems they were assigned a lot more deeply than we did (you see this all the time in VoIP today). The "improvements" that we installed to replace that "archiac" technology were not, in retrospect, necessarily improvements, and may not have done anyone any good.
E-mail is another good example. I have been using it since the late 1970s. During the 1985-1995 time frame it may have actually been a net productivity gain. Today? Probably the biggest productivity destroyer out there.
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.
sPh
Re:Older people (Score:2)
When you get only maybe two emails a day, you will understand.
Re:Older people (Score:2)
If by adapting you mean using more and more ritalin, then you're right.
Re:Older people (Score:2)
Re:Older people (Score:2)
The article makes the assumption that this new normal is bad. That in itself is questionable, but probably not entirely wrong. We're interrupted, we're context-switching, we're not capable of paying attention, etc. Older generations feel more stress in this kind of environment. Remove the constant flow of informati
Re:Older people (Score:3, Insightful)
Your post may be true for something, but it certainly isn't true for what this article talks about, which is the dangers of multitasking.
Re:Older people (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, first, which studies?
Secondly, and more to the point, "younger people are largely immune to it" so far. Youth implies a shorter exposure to the hazards of multitasking, not neccesarily a greater inherent resistance to it's ill effects.
In fact, Human Resource departments and therapists are seeing more and more people are burning out in their mid-twenties. Stress releated conditions, such as ulcers, hypertension, etc, normally seen in middle age, are becoming increasingly common in younger and younger individuals.
So you can't state "younger people are largely immune" until you have actually seen them grow older without ill effect, and the early evidence is not on your side.
suppose it's simply that older people, not being used to this mass of information
It's been decades since an average person could first easily recieve vastly more information in a day than they could ever process. (For an interesting historical sidetrip, look up the 19th century origins of the hypothysised medical condition "neurasthesia," attributed to the prevalance of the telegraph and telephone and how they sped up the pace of life. Even if neurasthesia is a bogus condition, it tells you something about how long information overload has been an issue.) Don't fall victim to an intellectual version of the same "immortality syndrome" that convinces teenagers they can engage in any reckless physical behavior they choose, because they, unlike all the old people, will never die.
Single Mothers (Score:3, Funny)
More than four things ... (Score:2, Informative)
I learned multitasking with Dune2 (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing multitasking isn't good for is programming complex things while doing other things. When we're programming, we need to use our memory to keep track of all the variables and threads going on. If we start doing others things, we can be distracted because our brain has trouble with the memory and it impairs our coding.
Another thing that's not good to multitask is driving with a cell phone. If you get too caught up in the conversation, your attention can be diverted from the road. You can normally drive like a zombie, but in times of emergency response you could be screwed. Also if someone does something stupid to cause a wreck, people may blame your cell phone even if you weren't at fault.
It ain't just the cell phone.... (Score:2)
All these things distract as much if not more than a simple cell phone call, yet the black sheep is the phone. Strange, is it not?
All I have to say (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how this applies to Slashdot readers (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at the comments people leave. It's pretty obvious that the average Slashdotters attention span is about that of a -Oh look a bunny!
To true (Score:2)
To the point that sometimes I feel like "tweak" from South Park. (not because of caffeine either.. because I'm off the caffeine )
Its the only addiction I allow myself.. so don't you DARE take that away from me!
Depends on the kind of work (Score:5, Insightful)
In another vein, we've always had distractions, and the ones posed by technology are just a new form of it. What separates an efficient individual from an inefficient one is the ability to block out these distractions when needed, and only focus on the goal at hand. The rest is all FUD that these so-called cognitive experts throw in to justify their existence. I'm fedup of these experts extrapolating some extreme cases and generalizing them to create non-existent issues.
Cognitive overload. Bah. We've always had cognitive overload. Only the jingo is new. I think i should change my profession and start bullshitting my way into some real money.
Brief synopsis: (Score:2)
Baloney (Score:2)
ADD people actually sit around wondering why everyone else cannot keep up with them and their racing, high-speed minds.
"Doesn't everyone cycle through five things at once in their mind?"
Now of course, I must mention that every couple of months my world completely explodes and I must spend entire weekends doing nothing more than staring at the wall while I
IMO, it's stupid to try and multitask (Score:2, Interesting)
Work hard, play hard, but not simultaneously.
When I'm working, coding or debugging or whatever, I'm like a dog with a bone, and I don't leave the task at hand until it's done. If anyone comes into my office and asks me for something, I tell them "when I'm done".
I accomplish a whole lot more this way, the code I write is better, so I spend less time debugging and testing, and in turn spend less time supporting it in the field (small company
Cognitive Overload is not new (Score:2, Interesting)
During flight training, one of the first things that you're taught is to focus on the important stuff first, and prioritize. Don't let an interruption from air traffic control interrupt the flow involved in actually flying the plane... don't let an attempt at navigation/location get in the way of flying the plane... in fact set your priorities
Mmmn (Score:2, Interesting)
Medicating the multitaskers (Score:2)
I'm looking for a new job because of this (Score:5, Insightful)
I've told management: "I don't want to run an instant messenger, it hurts my productivity and is very stressful"
They replied: "It's the way we're doing business as a team"
Now I'm looking for a job elsewhere, because exactly as described in the article, I'm exhausted at the end of the day, I have a backlog of projects like you wouldn't imagine, it's stupid.
I've found myself reluctant to focus on complex tasks because I expect to be interrupted. Interruptions from instant messaging are often emergencies which occupy a whole day with stupid little updates and inappropriate prioritization. It seems the A-hole bugging you on IM is more important than the person silently and patiently waiting for the scheduled deadline.
I forget things, I can't read a document to completion or properly compose replies to email. Infact... right now, I'm avoiding a complex task... my IM will crackle to life any second with some stupid emergency. It feels futile to even get started when it takes an hour just to set things up to start working on it. Four times in the past two weeks, my instant messenger has dragged me into some emergency which has prevented me from working on it.
I'm trying to push management back to a usenet-style system for "I need help!" emergencies and a careful analysis of timelines and responsibility (i.e. fault and impact) before anyone picks up a phone. There's nothing wrong with interrupting people if there's an emergency, but management should be able to prevent it from reaching that point.
(Hey look, I got an instant message! and it should only take about two hours to deal with. Glad I didn't get started on that project.)
They Don't Know What They're Talking About (Score:2)
What worries me (Score:2)
In the past, if you wanted to get somthing into a scientific journal, you had to pass through 'security' in the form of peer review.
The notion of fact checking has been fading from our society. While I personally favor the ability to query a variety of sources and tell fact from fiction myself, at the risk of sounding arrogant I worry that some others might be less adept. Far be it from me to actually argue for the centralization of power, but I w
Hard to generalize (Score:2)
Personal example - I can deal with a fair amount of multiple tasking as long as it's the right kind of task. However, some things require concentration. For myself, this means putting headphones on and turning on some music. If I don't have something that will tune out everything else, I fall right back into "do a little of everything mode".
On the other hand, my wife has to be focused and has
Simple economics (Score:2)
The simplier explanation is that as one has more and more money, it's relative value goes down and one is willing to spend less time for the same amount of money, ie time becomes more valuable. Sim
Long waits are part of the problem (Score:2)
Probably, if compiles and other long tasks were much shorter, it would be easier to maintain focus. Or perhaps I need to train myself to simply wait.
Another article (Score:3, Interesting)
I kind of agree and use some real life examples. For those of us who program - you sit down, you get in your grove and you start to code. Then someone calls. I generally have to unfocus from what I am doing and take a couple of seconds before I can even understand what the person wants. Then, when I am finished with the call, it takes me a few seconds to get back into my work (and hell I might of lost my grove).
Donald Knuth knows this (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reminded of a note on Dr. Donald Knuth's [stanford.edu] web page. Dr. Knuth apparently ditched e-mail in 1990 [stanford.edu] after 15 years of use.
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.
Slightly OT; customized news (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, anyone else feel this way and have some options?
citations (Score:3, Informative)
The human brain is a huge energy suck and if we didn't need it, it would be got rid of very quickly. True, there are some parts which can be electrically stimulated which don't produce hallucinations, but what does that prove?
Re:So we don't multitask ? (Score:2)
I have met only a very small number of people capable of that one and only with practice and thinking about it for a second.
I actually use that in interviews, espically when the overly certified greenie is bragging up his
Re:Neoliberal Tyranny of Enforced Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
When our technological dreams began becoming reality, some pundits predicted we would be swamped by leisure time. That didn't happen. We're working longer and harder, and seem more stressed over downsizing and outsourcing and expectations than ever.
But why should that be so? The answer is not "globalization", which is just the latest leftist term for "capitalism." (I guess "neo-liberal" is an even newer term, since this is the first time I've seen it used.) The answer is much simpler: taxes. All productivity gains, and then some, are eaten up by excessive taxation.
In Canada, almost 50% of every dollar we make [fraserinstitute.ca] goes to the government. (The U.S. is in a similar, although slightly better, situation.)
It's simple math that explains why families changed from single-parent earners to double-parent earners. If you take away half of a family's income, then twice as many people in that family have to work. (Theoretically, one person could work twice as many hours, or get paid twice as much, but those alternate solutions are very unlikely.)
Stop blaming Wal-Mart, Boeing, McDonalds, etc. for the problems that are actually caused by the government, and we can start finding actual solutions to our problems.
Re:Neoliberal Tyranny of Enforced Competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Ermmm... and what does the government do with that money? Make a huge stash and burn it?
Of course not. It returns to your pocket, indirectly. In forms of unemployment/health benefits or pensions, or highways, or public transportation s
Re:Neoliberal Tyranny of Enforced Competition (Score:3, Interesting)
One viewpoint might be to try and see govt as a machine. There are many types of machines, and in my life I have studied, operated and designed many types of machines,from nuclear power plant, to cars, to analog and digital circuits to software systems. Sometimes machines need to be complicated if we want to be able to