oh btw TS, I like your siggy..

Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods of lack of activities or when individuals are uninterested in the activities surrounding them.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Etymology
* 2 Psychology
* 3 Philosophy
* 4 Causes and effects
* 5 Popular culture and the arts
* 6 See also
* 7 References

Etymology

The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House, by Charles Dickens, written in 1852,[1] although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of "to be tiresome or dull" since 1768.[2]

Psychology

Boredom has been defined by Fisher in terms of its central psychological processes: �an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity.�[3] M. R. Leary and others define boredom similarly, and somewhat more succinctly, as �an affective experience associated with cognitive attentional processes.�[4] These definitions make it clear that boredom arises not from a lack of things to do but from the inability to latch onto any specific activity. Nothing engages us, despite an often profound desire for engagement.

There appear to be three general types of boredom, all of which involve problems of engagement of attention. These include times when we are prevented from engaging in something, when we are forced to engage in some unwanted activity, or when we are simply unable, for no apparent reason, to maintain engagement in any activity or spectacle.[5]

An important psychological construct is that of boredom proneness; a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale.[6] Consistent with the definition provided above, recent research has found that boredom proneness is clearly and consistently associated with failures of attention.[7] Boredom and boredom proneness are both theoretically and empirically linked to depression and depressive symptoms.[8][9][10] Nonetheless, boredom proneness has been found to be as strongly correlated with attentional lapses as with depression.[11]

Although boredom is often viewed as a trivial and mild irritant, boredom, and especially boredom proneness has been linked to an amazingly diverse range of psychological, physical, educational, and social problems.

Philosophy

Boredom is a condition characterized by perception of one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking in stimulation. This can result from leisure and a lack of aesthetic interests. Labor, however, and even art may be alienated and passive, or immersed in tedium (see Marx's theory of alienation). There is an inherent anxiety in boredom; people will expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many circumstances, it is accepted as suffering to be endured. Common passive ways to escape boredom are to sleep or to think creative thoughts (daydream). Typical active solutions consist in an intentional activity of some sort, often something new, as familiarity and repetition lead to the tedious.

Boredom also plays a role in existentialist thought. In contexts where one is confined, spatially or otherwise, boredom may be met with various religious activities, not because religion would want to associate itself with tedium, but rather, partly because boredom may be taken as the essential human condition, to which God, wisdom, or morality are the ultimate answers. Boredom is in fact taken in this sense by virtually all existentialist philosophers as well as by Schopenhauer. Heidegger wrote about boredom in two texts available in English, in the 1929/30 semester lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and again in the essay What is Metaphysics? published in the same year. In the lecture, Heidegger included about 100 pages on boredom, probably the most extensive philosophical treatment ever of the subject. He focused on waiting at train stations in particular as a major context of boredom.[12] In Kierkegaard's remark in Either/Or, that "patience cannot be depicted" visually, there is a sense that any immediate moment of life may be fundamentally tedious.

Without stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with nothingness, the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential anxiety. Heidegger states this idea nicely: "Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole."[13]

Arthur Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to prove the vanity of human existence, stating, "...for if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfil and satisfy us."[14]

Erich Fromm and other similar thinkers of critical theory speak of bourgeois society in terms similar to boredom, and Fromm mentions sex and the automobile as fundamental outlets of postmodern boredom.

Above and beyond taste and character, the universal case of boredom consists in any instance of waiting, as Heidegger noted, such as in line, for someone else to arrive or finish a task, or while one is travelling.

Boredom, however, may also increase as travel becomes more convenient, as the vehicle may become more like the windowless monad in Leibniz's monadology. The automobile requires fast reflexes, making its operator busy and hence, perhaps for other reasons as well, making the ride more tedious despite being over sooner.

Causes and effects

Although it has not been widely studied, research on boredom suggests that boredom is a major factor impacting diverse areas of a person's life. People ranked low on a boredom-proneness scale were found to have better performance in a wide variety of aspects of their lives, including career, education, and autonomy.[15]

Boredom can be a symptom of clinical depression. Boredom can be a form of learned helplessness, a phenomenon closely related to depression. Some philosophies of parenting propose that if children are raised in an environment devoid of stimuli, and are not allowed or encouraged to interact with their environment, they will fail to develop the mental capacities to do so.
The Unsmiling Tsarevna (Nesmeyana), by Viktor Vasnetsov
The Unsmiling Tsarevna (Nesmeyana), by Viktor Vasnetsov

In a learning environment, a common cause of boredom is lack of understanding; for instance, if one is not following or connecting to the material in a class or lecture, it will usually seem boring. However, the opposite can also be true; something that is too easily understood, simple or transparent, can also be boring. Boredom is often inversely related to learning, and in school it may be a sign that a student is not challenged enough (or too challenged). An activity that is predictable to the students is likely to bore them. [16]

Boredom has been studied as being related to drug abuse among teens. [17]

Boredom has been proposed as a cause of pathological gambling behavior. A study found results consistent with the hypothesis that pathological gamblers seek stimulation to avoid states of boredom and depression.[18]

Popular culture and the arts

In Chapter 18 of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1854�1900) it is written; "The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness".

Iggy Pop, the Deftones, Buzzcocks, and Blink-182 have all written songs with boredom mentioned in the title. Other songs about boredom and activities people turn to when bored include Green Day's song "Longview", System of a Down's "Lonely Day", and Bloodhound Gang's "Mope".

Douglas Adams depicted a robot named Marvin the Paranoid Android whose boredom appeared to be the defining trait of his existence in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

See also

* Apathy
* Dysthymia
* Motivation

tl;dr

TL;DR

Too long; didn't read. Initialism used in response to a writer that doesn't know when to shut the **** up. Most of what is found on LiveJournal is considered TL;DR. Notable examples of this facepalmingly annoying writing trend include The Holy Babble, everything ever written by Bill O'Reilly, and most of Encyclopedia Dramatica. TL;DR in all forms is a bannable offense on the Something Awful forums.

The polar opposite of TL;DR is TS;DR, which nobody ****ing uses.

Barnes & Noble's interweb site SparkNotes tries to fight TL;DR syndrome in books and shit, but their summaries are usually just as long and boring as the source material, because they are mostly written by pretentious ***** who wish they could write novels themselves instead of just summarizing them.


Doing it wrong
Contents
[hide]

* 1 How can TL;DR help me?
* 2 Supermemoing as an extreme anti-TL;DR countermeasure
* 3 On TL;DR
* 4 See Also
* 5 External Links

[edit] How can TL;DR help me?

Despite the negative connotation TL;DR usually has, it can also be used to one's advantage. If your teacher assigns you a paper on some boring-ass topic like the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, you know that b**** isn't gonna read every single paper in your 500 seat lecture class, so you can just fire up the copypasta machine and make your paper so long and boring that she'll get about 3 pages in before giving up and scribbling a "B" on it before running of to some seedy motel with one of her other students.

While you could ctrl-c and ctrl-v real facts from a reliable source, it may be easier just to paste the same information in over and over again to take up space. While you could ctrl-c and ctrl-v real facts from a reliable source, it may be easier just to paste the same information in over and over again to take up space. While you could copypasta real facts from a reliable source, it may be easier just to paste the same information in over and over again to take up space. While you could ctrl-c and ctrl-v real facts from a reliable source, it may be easier just to paste the same information in over and over again to take up space. While you could ctrl-c and ctrl-v real facts from a reliable source, it may be easier just to paste the same information in over and over again to take up space.
[edit] Supermemoing as an extreme anti-TL;DR countermeasure

If some ******* presents to you a long text and you still need to read it, you can incrementally read it with SuperMemo. What this entails is you mince and flashcardize the shit out of the text until it gets obliterated and you can't recognize it. It's like throwing the piece of e-paper in acid. The TL;DR is no moar.
[edit] On TL;DR

"Just yesterday, I used this in lowercase (thinking of this conversation) and it didn't raise any eyebrows..... When the punctuation-less variant also exists (and especially when it seems to be more common) the unadorned version should have precedence, perhaps with an alternative spellings mention and/or a soft redirect from the punctuated version<"/code>

<code>~ Connel MacKenzie on TL;DR [1]

This post has been edited by alpha0201: May 14 2008, 09:12 AM

u are early too..lol

kopitiam makes people talk stupid. true.

some just like attention

Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a cell phone conversation while driving a car.[1] Sometimes attention shifts to matters unrelated to the external environment, a phenomenon referred to as mind-wandering or "spontaneous thought". Attention is one of the most intensely studied topics within psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

William James, in his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), remarked:
� "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German."[2] �


Contents
[hide]

* 1 History of the study of attention
o 1.1 1850s to 1900s
o 1.2 1950s to present
* 2 Current research
o 2.1 Clinical model of attention
o 2.2 Overt and covert attention
o 2.3 Executive attention
o 2.4 Neural correlates of attention
* 3 References
* 4 See also
* 5 Further reading

[edit] History of the study of attention

[edit] 1850s to 1900s

In James' time, the method more commonly used to study attention was introspection. However, as early as 1858, Franciscus Donders used mental chronometry to study attention and it was a major field of intellectual inquiry by such diverse authors as Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Max Nordau. One major debate in this period was whether it was possible to attend to two things at once (split attention). Walter Benjamin described this experience as "reception in a state of distraction." This disagreement could only be resolved through experimentation.

[edit] 1950s to present

In the 1950s, research psychologists renewed their interest in attention when the dominant epistemology shifted from positivism (i.e., behaviorism) to realism during what has come to be known as the "cognitive revolution" [3] The cognitive revolution admitted unobservable cognitive processes like attention as legitimate objects of scientific study.

Colin Cherry and Donald Broadbent, among others, performed experiments on dichotic listening. In a typical experiment, subjects would use a set of headphones to listen to two streams of words in different ears and selectively attend to one stream. After the task, the experimenter would question the subjects about the content of the unattended stream.[citation needed]

During this period, the major debate was between early-selection models and late-selection models. In the early selection models (first proposed by Donald Broadbent and Anne Treisman), attention shuts down or attenuates processing in the unattended ear before the mind can analyze its semantic content. In the late selection models (first proposed by J. Anthony Deutsch and Diana Deutsch), the content in both ears is analyzed semantically, but the words in the unattended ear cannot access consciousness.[citation needed] This debate has still not been resolved.[not specific enough to verify]

Anne Treisman developed the highly influential feature integration theory[4]. According to this model, attention binds different features of an object (e.g., color and shape) into consciously experienced wholes. Although this model has received much criticism, it is still widely accepted or held up with modifications as in Jeremy Wolfe's Guided Search Theory.[5]

In the 1960s, Robert Wurtz at the National Institutes of Health began recording electrical signals from the brains of macaques who were trained to perform attentional tasks. These experiments showed for the first time that there was a direct neural correlate of a mental process (namely, enhanced firing in the superior colliculus).[citation needed]

In the 1990s, psychologists began using PET and later fMRI to image the brain in attentive tasks. Because of the highly expensive equipment that was generally only available in hospitals, psychologists sought for cooperation with neurologists. Pioneers of brain imaging studies of selective attention are psychologist Michael I. Posner (then already renown for his seminal work on visual selective attention) and neurologist Marcus Raichle.[citation needed] Their results soon sparked interest from the entire neuroscience community in these psychological studies, which had until then focused on monkey brains. With the development of these technological innovations neuroscientists became interested in this type of research that combines sophisticated experimental paradigms from cognitive psychology with these new brain imaging techniques. Although the older technique of EEG had long been to study the brain activity underlying selective attention by Johnson & friends went on adventure in 2008 and got srrested in 3000 psychophysiologists, the ability of the newer techniques to actually measure precisely localized activity inside the brain generated renewed interest by a wider community of researchers. The results of these experiments have shown a broad agreement with the psychological, psychophysiological and monkey literature.[citation needed]

[edit] Current research

[improper synthesis?]

Attention remains a major area of investigation within education, psychology and neuroscience. Many of the major debates of James' time remain unresolved. For example, although most scientists accept that attention can be split, strong proof has remained elusive. And there is still no widely accepted definition of attention more concrete than that given in the James quote above. This lack of progress has led many observers to speculate that attention refers to many separate processes without a common mechanism.

Areas of active investigation involve determining the source of the signals that generate attention, the effects of these signals on the tuning properties of sensory neurons, and the relationship between attention and other cognitive processes like working memory. A relatively new body of research is investigating the phenomenon of traumatic brain injuries and their effects on attention. TBIs are a fairly common occurrence in a significant segment of the population and often result in diminished attention.
Neuropsychology

Topics

Brain-computer interfaces � Traumatic Brain Injury
Brain regions � Clinical neuropsychology
Cognitive neuroscience � Human brain
Neuroanatomy � Neurophysiology
Phrenology � Common misconceptions
Brain functions

arousal � attention
consciousness � decision making
executive functions � language
learning � memory
motor coordination � sensory perception
planning � problem solving
thought
People

Arthur L. Benton � David Bohm �
Ant�nio Dam�sio � Kenneth Heilman �
Phineas Gage � Norman Geschwind �
Elkhonon Goldberg � Donald Hebb �
Alexander Luria � Muriel D. Lezak �
Brenda Milner � Karl Pribram �
Oliver Sacks �
Rodolfo Llinas � Roger Sperry� H.M.� K.C.
Tests

Bender-Gestalt Test
Benton Visual Retention Test
Clinical Dementia Rating
Continuous Performance Task
Glasgow Coma Scale
Hayling and Brixton tests
Lexical decision task
Mini-mental state examination
Stroop effect
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
Wisconsin card sorting task
Tools

Johari Window
Mind and Brain Portal
This box: view � talk � edit

[edit] Clinical model of attention

Clinical models frequently differ from investigation models. This is the case of attention models. One of the most used models for the evaluation of attention in patients with very different neurologic pathologies is the model of Sohlberg and Mateer.[6] This hierarchic model is based in the recovering of attention processes of brain damage patients after coma. Five different kinds of activities of growing difficulty are described in the model; connecting with the activities that patients could do as their recovering process advanced.

* Focused attention: This is the ability to respond discretely to specific visual, auditory or tactile stimuli.
* Sustained attention: This refers to the ability to maintain a consistent behavioral response during continuous and repetitive activity.
* Selective attention: : This level of attention refers to the capacity to maintain a behavioral or cognitive set in the face of distracting or competing stimuli. Therefore it incorporates the notion of "freedom from distractibility"
* Alternating attention: it refers to the capacity for mental flexibility that allows individuals to shift their focus of attention and move between tasks having different cognitive requirements.
* Divided attention: This is the highest level of attention and it refers to the ability to respond simultaneously to multiple tasks or multiple task demands.

This model has been shown to be very useful in evaluating attention in very different pathologies, correlates strongly with daily difficulties and is especially helpful in designing stimulation programmes such as APT (attention process training), a rehabilitation programme for neurologic patients of the same authors.

[edit] Overt and covert attention
This section does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007)
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Attention may be differentiated according to its status as 'overt' versus 'covert' [7]. Overt attention is the act of directing sense organs towards a stimulus source. Covert attention is the act of mentally focusing on one of several possible sensory stimuli. Covert attention is thought to be a neural process that enhances the signal from a particular part of the sensory panorama.

There are studies that suggest the mechanisms of overt and covert attention may not be as separate as previously believed. Though humans and primates can look in one direction but attend in another, there may be an underlying neural circuitry that links shifts in covert attention to plans to shift gaze. For example, if individuals attend to the right hand corner field of view, movement of the eyes in that direction may have to be actively suppressed.

The current view is that visual covert attention is a mechanism for quickly scanning the field of view for interesting locations. This shift in covert attention is linked to eye movement circuitry that sets up a slower saccade to that location.

[edit] Executive attention
This section does not cite any references or sources. (September 2007)
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Inevitably situations arise where it is advantageous to have cognition independent of incoming sensory data or motor responses. There is a general consensus in psychology that there is an executive system based in the frontal cortex that controls our thoughts and actions to produce coherent behavior. This function is often referred to as executive function, executive attention, or cognitive control.

No exact definition has been agreed upon. However, typical descriptions involve maintaining behavioral goals, and using these goals as a basis for choosing what aspects of the environment to attend to and which action to select.

[edit] Neural correlates of attention

Most experiments show that one neural correlate of attention is enhanced firing. If a neuron has a certain response to a stimulus when the animal is not attending to the stimulus, then when the animal does attend to the stimulus, the neuron's response will be enhanced even if the physical characteristics of the stimulus remain the same.

In a recent review, Knudsen[8] describes a more general model which identifies four core processes of attention, with working memory at the center:

* Working memory temporarily stores information for detailed analysis.
* Competitive selection is the process that determines which information gains access to working memory.
* Through top-down sensitivity control, higher cognitive processes can regulate signal intensity in information channels that compete for access to working memory, and thus give them an advantage in the process of competitive selection. Through top-down sensitivity control, the momentary content of working memory can influence the selection of new information, and thus mediate voluntary control of attention in a recurrent loop.
* Bottom-up saliency filters automatically enhance the response to infrequent stimuli, or stimuli of instinctive or learned biological relevance.

Neurally, at different hierarchical levels spatial maps can enhance or inhibit activity in sensory areas, and induce orienting behaviors like eye movement.

* At the top of the hierarchy, the frontal eye fields (FEF) on the dorsolateral frontal cortex contain a retinocentric spacial map. Microstimulation in the FEF induces monkeys to make a saccade to the relevant location. Stimulation at levels too low to induce a saccade will nonetheless enhance cortical responses to stimuli located in the relevant area.
* At the next lower level, a variety of spacial maps are found in the parietal cortex. In particular, the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) contains a saliency map and is interconnected both with the FEF and with sensory areas.
* Certain automatic responses that influence attention, like orienting to a highly salient stimulus, are mediated subcortically by the superior colliculi.
* At the neural network level, it is thought that processes like lateral inhibition mediate the process of competitive selection.

wah, know how to copy pasta, so cleber

This post has been edited by notanon: May 14 2008, 09:29 AM

Memang pun

nope.. dun blame kopitiam blame the person itself that become stupid

hey u wan an afro on ur avatar? i think it'll look good on u..

lol

Kopitiam is the place to show your stupidness than hiding it in real life.
Showing that you are stupid are better than acting like you're smart but don't know anything.


Am mi reply sound stoopid too?

don't mind me, i'm on the way to page 10

it make me street smart !!!

ha ha ha


@ edward

can pm me the price of film SLR?

http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/431781/+990

read the last 2 pages.. worse then kopitiam

what to do?
ha ha ha

Har har har

i don't blame kopitiam i was st00pid before i got here. i know. i took an before and after IQ test. no improvements whatsoever!!!!

ITT = Stupid people stupifying themself further
Includes the poster