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Cognitive Science, Decision-Making and Ethics
Everybody loves a good debate about the mystery of consciousness. Physicists get to invent quantum mechanical explanations of macroscopic phenomena. Humanities folk get to poo-poo the evils of reductionism. Journalists can trot out their full repertoire of both scientific and ethical cliches. Everybody gets to argue. There are good working theories of consciousness that are…
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Spending Quality Time with the Most Interesting Man in the World
“The young man visiting the archeological site on Skraeling Island is the same fellow who at the end of the book encounters a stranger on the road to Port Famine, but also not.” So says the end of the beginning of Horizon, Barry Lopez’s unique travelogue through a lifetime. And what a life he’s lived.…
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College: America’s 4 Year Queue
There’s been much discussion lately around various aspects of education and policy – from AP classes to book “banning” to school choice. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The single most important part of any culture is what it teaches people: the skills we teach, the attributes we mold and reward in the young, and…
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Words Fail Us – Language and Rationality
“Strange to wander in the mist, each is alone. No tree knows his neighbor. Each is alone.” Hesse Cognitive science can’t settle questions of right and wrong. But it can set the table for theories of rational decision-making and ethics. And the one thing we know for sure about how we think is that, at…
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The Role of Reinforcement Learning in Transformative Decision-Making
Cognitive science can’t settle questions of right and wrong. But it can set the table for theories of rational decision-making and ethics. And the one thing we know for sure about how we think is that, at the most fundamental level, our brains are connection systems that are changed by experience.This matters; transformational experiences and…
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Problems in Cognition and the Work to be Rational (Post)
For a decision-maker, the nature of human cognition creates the challenges of transformational experience and the necessity for self-altering decisions. But the nature of connection systems also creates a series of important hurdles to both optimal decision-making in preference optimization and thoughtful decision-making around self-change. Since connection systems can do amazing things (like become unbeatable…
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Samuel Adams Revolutionary
At a recent Berkeley concert featuring Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, Hope introduced Max Richter’s Four Seasons Recomposed (which formed the second half of the concert), recounting the story of the piece’s creation. Richter wrote it for Hope and when he first broached the idea, Hope says he rather flippantly asked Richter what…
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Prediction & Cognition
Cognitive science can’t settle questions of right and wrong. But it can set the table for theories of rational decision-making and ethics. And the one thing we know for sure about how we think is that, at the most fundamental level, our brains are connection systems that are changed by experience. This, unlike theories of…
We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational
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