Beautifully Biased Brains
Quirks and discoveries about our brains, how we perceive intelligence, and why we can't seem to ever fully understand it.
Charlie Gedeon and
Beautifully Biased Brains
“As I’ve tried to understand how to become a better conversationalist, I’ve found that I’ve had to overcome weird ideas about what a good conversationalist is like. A lot of people think a good conversationalist is someone who can tell funny stories. That’s a raconteur, but it’s not a conversationalist. A lot of people think a good
... See moreThe human brain is hardwired to infer intentions behind words. Every time you engage in conversation, your mind automatically constructs a mental model of your conversation partner. You then use the words they say to fill in the model with that person’s goals, feelings and beliefs.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) • Mistaking fluent speech for fluent thought
A sad irony is that the same cognitive bias that makes people ascribe humanity to GPT-3 can cause them to treat actual humans in inhumane ways. Sociocultural linguistics – the study of language in its social and cultural context – shows that assuming an overly tight link between fluent expression and fluent thinking can lead to bias against people... See more
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) • Mistaking fluent speech for fluent thought
One marker that I’m seeing someone clearly is when I understand how their strengths are also their weaknesses, how their genius lives right next to their dysfunction. I know that I’m further away from clarity when I am overly excited or overly skeptical.
Graham Duncan Blog • What’s going on here, with this human?
As companies increasingly embrace automated products and services, they need to understand how those things make their customers feel about themselves. To date, however, managers and academics have usually focused on something quite different: understanding what customers think about those things.
How AI Affects Our Sense of Self
Thinking ≠ Feeling. How do we measure the emotional impacts in our full-steam ahead approach with AI?
I think it is more helpful to talk about the underlying processes: spontaneous thought, or the decoupling of attention from perception, which is what happens when our thoughts separate from our perception of the environment. Both these processes take place during mind-wandering and daydreaming.
Tim Vernimmen • The science of a wandering mind
Psychology was focused on measurable, outward behavior then. I thought to myself: That’s not what I want to understand about my thoughts. What I want to know is: Why do they come, where do they come from, and why do they persist even if they interfere with attention to the here and now?
Tim Vernimmen • The science of a wandering mind
The truth is that one day you hate yourself, and the next day you can’t wait to use your gifts.
— Adam J. Kurtz