snek_boi

It seems that Microsoft is (perhaps inadvertently) employing dirty tactics to entice users like myself. Without having a Microsoft account, I am regularly receiving verification codes to log in. I'd usually dismiss these messages, but they come from official Microsoft.com domains. What's more, I'm receiving hundreds of them. These messages may lead me to believe that someone else has created an account using my email address or that there's a potential security risk associated with my email address.

By creating this sense of urgency and fear, Microsoft could be encouraging users like myself to create accounts out of concern for our own safety and the integrity of our personal data. This tactic plays on our natural desire for self-preservation and can lead us to take actions that may not have been initially intended.

However, it's essential to note that this entire post is based on two facts:

1. I've received hundreds of messages from official Microsoft domains claiming to have my verification codes.
2. I don't have a Microsoft account with that email address.

Is this a tactic that a middle manager can use to claim they brought in more users? Is this just another example of the awful tactics that Microsoft uses? Or is this post in the wrong community and it's more of a bug that they should fix?

Apparently, the researchers contacted some VPN providers. Perhaps Proton is one of them.

Thinking a thought is like watering a plant in a garden. Your attention is the sprinkler. The more you water a plant (up to a point, of course), the more the plant grows.

Similarly, the more you think about a thought, the more that thought network grows. The denser a thought network, the likelier it is that you will end up thinking about/through that thought network. There are more entry points and the paths are better paved.

In other words, thinking thoughts make it likelier that you will think those thoughts in the future. This can cause psychological rigidity.

However, psycholofical flexibility can be developed through mindfulness. In particular, I am talking about mindfulness developed through meditations like mindful breathing. In that kind of meditation, you start by noticing your breath. When you're distracted by something, you pay attention to it, but you return to the breathing. The point is to develop flexible attention. You choose what to pay attention to, even when your attention is pulled by something.

That is why I say that experienced meditators would notice earworms just like anyone else (after listening to the song or remembering it because of another related memory), but because they can choose not to pay attention to it and feed that thought network, there is a lower probability of having those networks reinforced. Their sprinklers can turn off with more ease than non-meditators'.

Meditators can choose not to feed the cognitive network. Non-meditators could find themselves feeding the network.

Semantic satiation happens when repeating word or a phrase over and over makes it temporarily lose its meaning. This was first written about in the psychological literature by Titchener, in case you search it online and find that name.

Because word repetition causes defusion (in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy way), these professors could actually be more cognitively flexible than other people, at least in terms of whatever it is that they're grading.