Thinking About Thinking
Indy Neogy and
Thinking About Thinking
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
-Neil Postman, 2005
The metaphors we use shape how we view the world. Is the brain like a computer? Maybe, as Gurwinder says, the brain is the opposite: a machine that tries to circumvent thinking . Cognition costs time, and in a society that is information-rich and time-poor, people will use shortcuts to make decisions - feelings, aesthetics, environment,... See more
sari azout • Things I'm thinking about
No! The brain doesn't seek to circumvent thinking, this misunderstands the optimisation that goes on. The brain seeks to circumvent (where possible) computation - because computation is not only inefficient, but very often ineffective. Incidentally, beware of writers who decide they are PCs and you are an NPC.
how to make a complete map of everything you think
Lion Kimbro’s classic! Mapping everything in your brain
The model was helpful—but only to an extent. They found that while AI improved the output of less creative writers, it made little difference to the quality of the stories produced by writers who were already creative.
Rhiannon Williams • AI can make you more creative—but it has limits
If you did a lot of maths at school you are used to being given problems of the first type, and when you see a problem you want to find the analytic solution. It’s a good instinct, since analytic solutions are efficient. As long as you have the right method you can quickly reach an exact answer.
Lots of being smart is working out when you’re... See more
Lots of being smart is working out when you’re... See more
Tom Stafford • Complex Problems and the Rush to Judgement
thinking is an active pursuit — one that often happens when you are spending long stretches of time staring into space, then writing a bit, and then staring into space a bit more. It’s here that the connections are made and the insights are formed. And it is a process that stubbornly resists automation.
Casey Newton • Why note-taking apps don't make us smarter
sari and
Can you rationalize why a piece of art moves you? Why you have chemistry with one person over another? Why you like one piece of software more than another that does the same thing? Our decisions are not driven by logic, they are driven by emotion.
Sari Azout • Things I'm thinking about
Homo Prospectus is the best view on this - emotions are how we use the totality of our past and present thinking to make judgements.
This is why the people who score well on intelligence tests and win lots of chess games are no happier than the people who flunk the tests and lose at chess: well-defined and poorly defined problems require completely different problem-solving skills. Life ain’t chess! Nobody agrees on the rules, the pieces do whatever they want, and the board... See more