Thinking About Thinking
Indy Neogy and
Thinking About Thinking
@gordonbrander Although perhaps a 2x2 makes more sense per @kevin2kelly https://t.co/55uzti2B17
("JP") and
There is, unfortunately no good word for “skill at solving poorly defined problems.” Insight, creativity, agency, self-knowledge—they’re all part of it, but not all of it. Wisdom comes the closest, but it suggests a certain fustiness and grandeur, and poorly defined problems aren’t just dramatic questions like “how do you live a good life”; they're... See more
Adam Mastroianni • Why Aren't Smart People Happier?
But that’s physics, and physics deals with the natural. Engineering, on the other hand, is a science of the artificial , and it would be downright strange to insist that engineering artifacts have no purpose or telos.
Maxim Raginsky • Engineers as philosophers, Part 3
Important point about engineering, but also something I regularly raise about how economics misunderstands itself
Neuroscience research also teaches us that our emotional brains needn’t always operate beneath our radar. Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist who applies behavioral economics theory in his investment consulting business, advises clients to cultivate emotional self-awareness, notice their moods as they happen, and reflect on how their moods may... See more
Gardiner Morse • Decisions and Desire
It is difficult to overstate the advantage of intensely thinking about things in a world coated with a film of unthinking inertia. But it is also difficult to convey.
Simon Sarrisx.comphoebe and
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 • 13 cards
Falk Lieder, Ming Hsu, and Tom Griffiths showed that the ‘rational’ solution to this computational constraint is to over-sample extreme outcomes. That is, you should apply something like the availability heuristic by calling those more extreme (easily accessible) outcomes to mind. The result is a biased estimate, but one that is optimal given the... See more
Jason Collins • We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model - Works in Progress
Just like those lines, I think all of our various tests of intelligence aren’t as different as they seem. They’re all full of problems that have a few important things in common:
- There are stable relationships between the variables.
- There’s no disagreement about whether the problems are problems, or whether they’ve been solved.
- There have clear
Adam Mastroianni • Why Aren't Smart People Happier?
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.