There's a famous quote from Blaise Pascal that goes "All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."
I wonder if someone like Richard Feynman would have accomplished anything at all if he had a phone to distract him and he was incapable of simply sitting and thinking. Einstein came up with the central ideas of the Theory of Relativity while he was day-dreaming at work or on public transport.
Yeah. Human mind is very limited tool without external support. That's why writing was such a boon for humans and notation was such a boon for math.
> Are you incapable of just sitting and thinking about things?
Yeah. I can but that rarely acomplishes anything. If you think you can solve a problem just with your mind think again. Most problems are problems because you lack some information. And you won't get any missing information just by thinking. And if you have all the information, you just need to process it then you are still out of luck. Even moderately complex processing let's say roughly as hard as derivating moderately simple calculus requires at least a pen and piece of paper to support you wonderful mind with crappy operational memory that can hold at most seven things at once.
I would much rather do the thinking with my phone than without it.
I'm not Feynman and Einstein had plenty of paper.
Not to mention most people fight "boredom" with endless surfing at places where they have all the tools to accomplish tons of things -- in their home, in from of a screen.
