[
cognition
good
]
2002-04-11
Oliver Sacks in Wired: I'm a big fan of Oliver Sacks, so I was happy to come across
this article in Wired about him. It's kind of long, but pretty good. (via Follow Me Here)
[
cognition
]
2001-05-02
Resolving ambiguities is more complicated than you might think...
and it's currently beyond most computer-driven language parsing, as
this intriguing article points out. It also goes into some detail about how to get around this problem, and a bit about how humans deal with it.
I have my own ideas on the subject, about which I will expound at a later date...
(via
David Chess's Log).
[
cognition
good
]
2001-03-08
The placebo effect:
Was identified a lot more recently in history than I had supposed, according to this
interesting article at the National Institutes of Health.
I guess that explains why the deepest implications of it haven't seeped further than they have. This has a lot to do with my ongoing work, actually, about belief and cognition and why people think the way they do, and so on. I'll elaborate more later... just filing in the "ruminations" bin for now.
[
cognition
design
humor
]
2001-02-05
I'm a woman:
and
the gender test at thespark.com figured it out correctly, too. Cool! Try it out, it's fun.
What's amusing is that on their little bar graph thingie, I'm right smack dab in the middle. Seriously. Not surprising, considering I've always been a tomboy, though...
But I'm not sure what it means, if anything. Probably nothing. Hmm.
[
cognition
]
2001-01-18
Random insight o the day:
The problem of figuring out how to best manage a complex task is to turn problems of decision into problems of implementation. Er, that is, to figure out areas that you can "cheat" - make decisions based on rules, simplified if-then constructs, rather than agonize over which way to go. Then you can just *act*, and that's much easier than deciding.
What prompted this, you ask? Well, I'm playing
bejeweled, and thinking about strategy. I was thinking about strategies in general - what's the point of developing one? And how do you know when you've got a good piece of one?
I was thinking how with this game at least, I keep trying to come up with simple rules to govern which pieces I should move. Here's some of my strategy in this game so far:
- When in doubt, move pieces at the top rather than lower down. (Higher pieces in general). They can't mess up lower pieces, you see.
- If there are two ways to go, and one of them will destroy another potential move, pick the way that does *NOT* ruin other moves.
- Certain moves are equivalent, so don't waste time worrying about which one to do.
- Make moves that create the potential for additional moves.
- Moves that instantly cause other moves to cascade as a result are great, go for those when you can.
I haven't yet been able to determine whether vertical moves are on the whole better than horizontal moves, all other things being equal. It would save me lots of effort if I could figure that one out, once and for all. Right now, I just try to think ahead, to picture the board how it will be after my move, as best I can, but this is quite difficult (computationally expensive).
My top score so far is around 4500. I always get locked up right about then. Argh!
I don't record my score at the site, because you have to register to do that. Oh, and I always play level 1. Time limits are not my cup o tea.
[
cognition
]
2001-01-18
Vocabulary corner:
Today's word is:
maestrogenic - noun, meaning: teacher-induced, as a disorder or other problem (compare with "iatrogenic", meaning: doctor-induced, as a disease).
We found it used
here by Jerry Pournelle (a little misspelled, but that's okay). Here's a quote (and I fixed the spelling):
I make no doubt that something like ADD exists, just as true dyslexia exists. But true dyslexia is very rare, down under 1%, yet 10% and more of children are diagnosed as "having" dyslexia. Most cases of "dyslexia" are maestrogenic: they kid didn't learn to read because the kid wasn't taught to read. I do not know what the corresponding numbers for ADD are, but I would be astonished if "true ADD" amounted to more than 10% of the boys in schools. I truly would.
I don't see this word appearing in
various dictionaries. There are only nine hits at Google (none for the misspelled version). Maybe Pournelle coined this one? I'm not sure, but I like it!
[
cognition
the net
]
2000-08-25
Rethinking Navigation:
Some great usability arguments are put forward in this
post to a mailing list responding to a criticism of useit.com's lack of navigation. The whole thread is
here, but I haven't read the whole thing yet. Probably more gems to be found there, I imagine.
[
cognition
people
]
2000-08-25
What Sucks About Being Really Smart:
I read this before but didn't have the link - an
interesting article about maladjustment of high-IQ people. There's a lot more to it, but I remember there was a lot I identified with in this piece.
And for the record, my IQ has never been measured. I've taken online tests for fun, and according to my SAT scores, I could join Mensa, but I've never had an actual IQ test. I'm not sure if I ever want to. In a way, I'm curious, but I only want to know if it's really really high. :) I would hate to take one and get a score like 107.
[
cognition
later
]
2000-08-24
Spiffy:
I happened upon
Geoffrey Nunberg's Publications, and I want to read them later, so I'm logging this. He seems to have some interesting things to say about language, for one thing, and I'm a lapsed linguo-geek so I find it interesting.
[
cognition
]
2000-08-10
Um, this is good:
A little thick in places (I confess, I scanned quite a bit),
this bit from Red Rock Eater Digest is rather interesting.
Critical thinking means that you can, so to speak, see your glasses. You can look at the world, or you can back up and look at the framework of concepts and assumptions and practices through which you look at the world. Every such framework edits the world in some way; every such framework has its biases.
[
books
cognition
people
school
]
2000-07-21
On rewards & motivation:
This guy seems to be well-endowed in the clue department. He talks about how competition and reward systems simply don't work, and actually make things (morale & performance) worse. This holds true for the classroom, parenting, and management. Very fascinating, I think I may get one of his books.
