# Attention is all you have # 注意力是你所拥有的全部 > *（注：文章标题巧妙借用了自然语言处理与深度学习领域的里程碑式论文《Attention Is All You Need / 注意力就是你所需要的一切》，以此探讨人类在数字时代的注意力机制与自主心智。）* --- The Tetris effect is one of psychology’s most easy to reproduce experiments. Simply spend a bit of time playing the eponymous game every day for a few weeks. After a little while, you’ll start recognizing familiar Tetromino shapes in clouds, buildings, and everyday objects. You might even see them appear before your eyes when you start falling asleep. “俄罗斯方块效应”（Tetris effect，心理学中指当人长时间沉浸于某项特定活动后，现实视觉与潜意识思维会被其深刻塑造的现象）是心理学中最容易复现的实验之一。只需在几周时间里，每天花一点时间玩这款经典的益智游戏；不久之后，你就会开始在天上的云彩、街头的建筑轮廓和各种日常物品中，不自觉地识别出那些熟悉的俄罗斯方块图形（Tetromino，由四个正方形相连构成的几何几何方块）。当你闭上双眼、昏昏欲睡时，它们甚至会在你眼前不断浮现。

A gameboy and Tetrominos — Photo by Tom Tang / 摄影：Tom Tang

--- # Attention hijacking # 注意力劫持 There’s one lesson the Tetris effect teaches us: whatever you focus on long enough will end up shaping your thoughts. This can be a good thing since it’s how we learn new skills and discover new ideas. Sadly, less and less of our attention is focused intentionally. Instead of picking what we want to see we let other people decide what is supposed to be good for us. 俄罗斯方块效应给我们的深刻启示是：你长时间专注的任何事物，最终都会重塑你的思维模式。这本是一件好事，因为人类掌握新技能、萌生新观念正是依赖于这种专注机制。然而令人惋惜的是，我们能够主动、有意识去集中的注意力正在变得越来越稀缺。我们不再自主决定自己想看什么，而是任由外部平台与推荐系统来替我们决定“什么才对我们有益”。 Do you want to watch a video? YouTube knows you like cooking and art streams. But why not also recommend a few clips about the stock market bubble, global warming, and the war in Iran. Doomscrolling will make you stay longer and click on a few more ads. 你想看个视频放松一下？YouTube 算法固然知道你喜欢烹饪教程和艺术直播，但它紧接着就会顺水推舟推荐几段关于股市泡沫危机、全球气候变暖或是地区武装冲突的沉重短片。这种强迫性陷入焦虑却停不下来的“末日刷屏”（Doomscrolling，指在社交媒体上无法自拔地滚动浏览负面、灾难性新闻的行为），能让你在平台里驻留更久，从而多点击几则广告。 Do you want to listen to music? Just open a Spotify playlist and let the algorithm figure out what you like. Please ignore the AI slop they will insert in between real songs to avoid paying royalties to real artists. 你想听听音乐？只要点开 Spotify 播放列表，把耳朵交给算法去揣摩你的偏好即可。至于平台为了逃避向真实音乐人支付版权费、悄悄穿插在经典曲目之间的那些粗制滥造的“AI 垃圾内容”（AI Slop，指生成式 AI 大批量生产的无实质审美价值的内容），他们只希望你全当没看见。 Do you want to know how your colleagues are doing? Too bad, LinkedIn will bury any relevant career news between the opinion of complete strangers. It is surely just a coincidence that those strangers happen to be shilling whatever Microsoft is invested in at the moment. 你想了解同事们最近的工作动态？很遗憾，职场社交平台领英（LinkedIn）早已把真正与你相关的职业资讯，深埋在了海量素不相识的陌生人的高谈阔论之中。而这些陌生人恰好都在卖力吹捧微软（LinkedIn 的母公司）当前投资的各种概念与产品——这当然纯属“巧合”。 Do you want the opinion of strangers on a product? Well those Redditors you wanted to ask are probably just a bunch of LLMs talking to a bunch of Russian trolls now. I hope you didn’t value their opinion too much. 你想上网了解大家对某款产品的真实测评？可惜，你在海外论坛 Reddit 上想请教的那些“网友”，如今大概率只是一群大语言模型（LLM）在和网络水军机器人们互相对话（正是“死网理论”所描述的机器互刷生态）。但愿你没把那些虚假评论太当一回事。 If, like me and most people, you spend the major part of your day focused on your device, there’s no doubt it’s affecting you. And when you let someone else dictate what appears on your screen, it’s the same as giving them the key to your brain. 如果你和我以及大多数现代人一样，一天中绝大部分清醒的时间都把视线聚焦在屏幕上，那么毫无疑问，屏幕上的内容正在全天候重塑你的心智。而当你把决定屏幕上出现什么的权力拱手让给算法和巨头时，就等同于把打开你自己大脑思维大门的钥匙交给了别人。

A very old meme printed on a sticker — Photo by New York Said / 摄影：New York Said
（注：贴纸上印着经典网络迷因“All your base are belong to us / 你们所有的基地都属于我们”，源自世嘉游戏机旧作的蹩脚翻译，是千禧年初个人主义与草根网络极客文化繁荣的代表符号。）

--- # Back to an intentional internet # 重返有目的、有意识的互联网 The internet wasn’t always like that. Before recommendation algorithms were a thing, you had to decide what you would be doing on the computer. 互联网并非一开始就是这副被算法裹挟的模样。在推荐算法普及之前，每一次坐在电脑前，你都必须先由自己来决定接下来要做什么。 You didn’t really have one big app that you could open and order it to entertain you. Instead, you had a few dozen of bookmarks to websites, each with a specific idea in mind. A site for video game news, that one website with lots of tutorials, a blog about anime that didn’t update often enough, a wiki about a TV show from the 90s… 那时没有所谓的全能“超级 App”让你一键打开并吩咐它无休止地取悦你。相反，你的浏览器里躺着精心整理的几十个网站书签，每一个都有着清晰明确的访问意图：一个专门看主机游戏新闻的站点、一个存有大量硬核技术教程的网页、一个更新频率不高但字字珠玑的动漫个人博客，还有一个考据 90 年代老电视连续剧的维基百科页面…… Of course awful things existed on the web. We had Encyclopedia Dramatica and Rotten.com, but you actually had to put the effort to go there if you wanted. Nobody was going to put pictures of dead kids and far-right propaganda as a suggestion after a pancake recipe or a cat video. 早期的互联网当然也存在恶劣的阴暗面。我们经历过像 Rotten.com（早年知名的血腥猎奇休克网站）和 Encyclopedia Dramatica（充斥着极端网络喷子与恶搞文化的暗黑百科站点）这样的角落，但关键在于——你只有自己主动输入域名、付出精力去寻找时才会看到它们。绝不会有任何算法会在你刚刚看完一份松饼食谱或是一段猫咪视频后，冷不防在侧边推荐栏里给你推送令人作呕的血腥图片或极右翼政治煽动。 The good thing is that this intentional internet is still around. It has just been a bit buried below the corporate web, but it’s not very hard to find. After all you’re on this blog, so you probably already have a good idea about it. 值得庆幸的是，这种由人类意图主导的互联网从未彻底消亡。它只是被掩埋在了商业资本与大厂巨头精心搭建的信息茧房之下，但找寻它其实并不困难——毕竟你现在正驻足于这个独立的个人博客里，说明你对此早已了然于心。 The main difference between this time and now is you. When you want to get back to reading blogs, RSS feeds, and finish that tutorial instead of doomscrolling shorts, you have to get used to a slower internet. One where content is not infinite and doesn’t get updated every click. 昔日与当下的根本差异，关键在于“你”自身的选择。当你下定决心戒掉短视频的无尽滑屏，重返阅读独立博客、订阅 RSS 聚合源、静下心读完一篇技术教程时，你就必须学着去重新适应一个更从容、更缓慢的互联网——在那个世界里，内容并不是无限供应的，更不会在你每一次轻点手指时就疯狂刷新。 But like every habit, the only thing you have to do is to keep at it. And if you pay enough attention to it, something will click in your brain. 但就像培养任何一种习惯一样，你唯一需要做的就是坚持下去。只要你把宝贵的注意力真正交付于它，你的大脑终会在某一瞬间茅塞顿开，完成一次真正属于你自己的认知跃升。