[HN Gopher] The Cognitive Design of Tools of Thought (2014) [pdf]
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       The Cognitive Design of Tools of Thought (2014) [pdf]
        
       Author : andsoitis
       Score  : 121 points
       Date   : 2024-05-25 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu)
        
       | passwordle wrote:
       | This topic has been researched and discussed extensively in the
       | embodied cognition branch of cognitive science. It's mentioned as
       | a central aspect of cognition in Margaret Wilson's landmark paper
       | " Six views of embodied cognition"
       | (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12613670/) which came out 12
       | years before this one. I'm surprised to not see much of the
       | extensive research that has been on this idea before cited here.
        
         | tithe wrote:
         | Direct PDF link:
         | https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03196322.pdf
        
       | velcrovan wrote:
       | "The Extended Mind" by Andrew Clark and David Chalmers, is a much
       | more interesting (to me) examination of the categorical blurring
       | between the mind and externalized tools of thought.
       | 
       | https://consc.net/papers/extended.html
       | 
       | This idea is also one of the many interesting facets of my
       | favorite novel, "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel".
       | 
       | https://joeldueck.com/mind-palaces.html
        
       | asolove wrote:
       | If you're interested in this topic but want more, I recommend
       | "Cognition in the wild": https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262082310/
        
       | eggy wrote:
       | Will Eisner's, Comics and Sequential Art, book is great for
       | graphic storytelling and the history of the artform.
        
       | dctoedt wrote:
       | Coincidentally, the author, Dr. Barbara Tversky [0], was married
       | to Amos Tversky, of Kahneman and Tversky fame -- their decades-
       | long collaboration was the subject of one of Michael Lewis's
       | books [1]. After Amos Tversky's early death, Barbara Tversky and
       | the also-widowed Daniel Kahneman became partners until Kahneman's
       | own death just a few weeks ago.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Tversky
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Undoing_Project
        
       | ninjitsu3 wrote:
       | Here's an analysis of similar ideas, but in the context of
       | business strategy:
       | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.3613
        
       | alphazard wrote:
       | A common theme is that tools for thinking allow you to
       | restimulate your brain with its own output. Essentially creating
       | a full outer loop from your sensory inputs to your motor outputs.
       | 
       | I'm speculating now: There are probably smaller loops within the
       | brain that allow you to ruminate on a topic to think through it,
       | but those loops don't give you access to as many neurons or have
       | the same fidelity between iterations. The alternative to this
       | sort of self-stimulating recursion, is that everything we reason
       | about can be done in one pass from sensor to motor, which I find
       | unlikely.
       | 
       | The idea of applying multiple passes of the same networks using
       | memory to hand off between iterations also explains why memory
       | and other aspects of intelligence are correlated in humans, when
       | they needn't be. A machine has FLOPS independent of it's memory
       | capacity for example.
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | Is _culture_ also a tool for thought?
        
       | swayvil wrote:
       | There's a few cartoons going around where they describe the
       | effect of various drugs using graphical patterns, facial
       | expressions, etc.
       | 
       | That's a rich vein for development. It could be generalized and
       | optimized.
       | 
       | Because states of consciousness are so central to our ...
       | everything.
       | 
       | And it's a subject that's difficult to discuss. I imagine well-
       | designed models rendered with nice animations.
       | 
       | We could discuss drugs, dreams, focus, meditation, fiction...
        
       | smarm52 wrote:
       | > When thought overwhelms the mind, the mind puts it into the
       | world, notably in diagrams and gestures
       | 
       | And in song and words.
       | 
       | > Some ancient outpourings of thought ...
       | 
       | And oral histories.
       | 
       | So, using media to help with cognition. Odd that they don't
       | mention oral media.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-25 23:00 UTC)