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links, links, links
Sep. 21st, 2004 11:38 amEd Fredkin - Five big questions with pretty simple answers. This paper makes it somewhat clearer what digital mechanics is about. It talks about the physical consequences of the finite nature assumption. I wonder if this theory elegantly explains previous results. Does it "compress" our knowledge? (the analogy here is the information-theoretic view of learning)
Some interesting Pinker papers
The Faculty of Language: What’s Special about it?
We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g., words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g., speech perception). We find the hypothesis problematic.
Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche
a nice list of science books
courtesy of edge.org:
Susskind vs. Smolin on the Anthropic Principle
CURIOUS MINDS: HOW A CHILD BECOMES A SCIENTIST
A Talk with Daniel Gilbert about Affective Forecasting. Our errors in affective forecasting are like optical illusions rather than like illiteracy.
Judith Rich Harris - Children Don't do Things Half Way [why children turn out the way they do]
The core of her theory seems to be that parents don't have a big effect on children's personality, and that the "nurture" part comes almost entirely from their peer groups, in the following 3 ways:
( Read more... )
Some interesting Pinker papers
The Faculty of Language: What’s Special about it?
We examine the question of which aspects of language are uniquely human and uniquely linguistic in light of recent suggestions by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch that the only such aspect is syntactic recursion, the rest of language being either specific to humans but not to language (e.g., words and concepts) or not specific to humans (e.g., speech perception). We find the hypothesis problematic.
Language as an Adaptation to the Cognitive Niche
a nice list of science books
courtesy of edge.org:
Susskind vs. Smolin on the Anthropic Principle
CURIOUS MINDS: HOW A CHILD BECOMES A SCIENTIST
A Talk with Daniel Gilbert about Affective Forecasting. Our errors in affective forecasting are like optical illusions rather than like illiteracy.
[Gilbert] points out that "many economists believe that affective forecasting errors are impediments to rational action and hence should be eliminated—just as we would all agree that illiteracy or innumeracy are bad things that deserve to be eradicated. But cognitive errors may be more like optical illusions than they are like illiteracy. The human visual system is susceptible to a variety of optical illusions, but if someone offered to surgically restructure your eyes and your visual cortex so that parallel lines no longer appeared to converge on the horizon, you should run as far and fast as possible."
Judith Rich Harris - Children Don't do Things Half Way [why children turn out the way they do]
The core of her theory seems to be that parents don't have a big effect on children's personality, and that the "nurture" part comes almost entirely from their peer groups, in the following 3 ways:
( Read more... )
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