Field · 12 posts

Cognitive Science

Minds, memory, and bias. Below, everything that touches this field, including pieces that live mostly in neighboring territory.

The collection

All of Cognitive Science

Cognitive Science

Inversions of Wisdom

Here are 20 examples of prevailing wisdom turned on its head: - Seeing is believing Believing is seeing. - What goes up must come down What goes down can rise again. - Actions speak louder than words Words can…

3 min · Cognitive Science
Cognitive Science

As long as customers are human (agents anyone?)

Aspect Psychological Speciation Political Speciation --- --- --- Definition Formation of distinct psychological groups that process information and reason differently Development of separate political…

2 min · Cognitive Science
Cognitive Science

Bias≠Discrimination

A recent Nature Magazine article (Scale dichotomization reduces customer racial discrimination and income inequality) by a team from Yale University, Rice University and University of Toronto - Rotman School…

2 min · Cognitive Science
Cognitive Science

Unskilled and unaware of it

I love this nuanced interview of my CASBS at Stanford cohort fellow David Dunning. David became famous thanks to (or because of) a 1 paper he wrote with Justin Kruger: "Unskilled and unaware of it: How…

1 min · Cognitive Science
Evolution & Life

Fitness Beats Truth

The original “fitness beats truth” (FBT) theorems do not require an explicit assumption that “seeking truth is costly.” The key requirement, instead, is that evolution favors any perceptual or cognitive…

9 min · Evolution & Life
Artificial Intelligence

If AI alone > (AI + Human) > Human alone, what is that telling us?

Recent studies of AI in medicine, particularly in imagery and diagnostic reasoning, have surfaced an alarming trend if we are to believe in AI as a way to augment human abilities: an expert aided by AI is not…

3 min · Artificial Intelligence
Complexity & Simulation

Da Vinci, Fukushima, the aerial screw and the neocognitron

I saw a post by @juergen schmidhuber recently ( that gave me pause. About convolutional neural networks and the neocognitron, a 17-80 neural network architecture by the Japanese scientist Kunihiko Fukushima (…

3 min · Complexity & Simulation
Complexity & Simulation

Da Vinci, Fukushima, the aerial screw and the neocognitron

I saw a post by Jürgen Schmidhuber recently (all links in comments) that gave me pause . About convolutional neural networks and the neocognitron, a 17-80 neural network architecture by the Japanese scientist…

2 min · Complexity & Simulation
Artificial Intelligence

Personal Echo Chambers

A study by Eugine Leung and Oleg Urminsky showed up in my feed today through Richard Hahn by way of Stefano Puntoni (thank you all!!). "The narrow search effect and how broadening search promotes belief…

2 min · Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence

Spooky, and sometimes brilliant, ideas from AI in science

This article from @Anil Ananthaswamy for @quanta magazine (my favorite science magazine!) delivers a concise description of my own experience of using AI for scientific discovery: - Hallucinations are a…

2 min · Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence

Use cases gone wild with Dunning-Kruger AI

One consequence of the current genAI hype is companies, large and small, rushing to apply it to use cases that are either inappropriate or for which the technology is not yet ready. Of course, the more…

1 min · Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence

AI and illusions of understanding in scientific research

An article in Nature today (behind paywall, Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research) raises some interesting issues and questions about the use of hashtagai and…

1 min · Artificial Intelligence
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