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Super-Signalling
Evolution has created a nasty cognitive hack that ethologists call the super-stimulus. I’d like to propose a term for a related behaviour.
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Love, Math & Witchcraft: How Roasting Psychoanalysis Came Back to Bite Richard Feynman
The further we zoom in on Mother Nature, the clearer it becomes that, at its most fundamental level, science resembles ‘witch-doctoring’ more than anything else.
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A Personal Journey Towards Extended Intelligence, or: Getting Intimate With Chet
I’ve come to allow “Chet” entry to my most private quarters.
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Abortive Action : the Power of Walking Away
Steve Jobs famously said that “real artists ship”, but Ulf Lundell was perhaps even more profound in stating that “a cancelled concert is also a concert.”
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Getting Over Steve
The gospel of Jesus Christ was an exclusively male affair, but there are at least three female takes on Steve.
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The World’s Not Enough : Steve Jobs Held Hostage By Own Exquisite Taste
It’s sad to think that we need disaster to strike in our lives, in order to sober up and see what’s worth a damn. Sad, but at the same time also somehow hopeful.
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We Need to Talk About Steve
My bromance with Steve goes back as far as I can remember. That’s probably why I felt such a severe case of cognitive dissonance when picking up Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ memoir Small Fry.
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Two Types of Failure, part II : Process Over Product
If all you care about is to perfect your process, a great product will eventually follow.
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An Occupational Hazard : Suffering the Reverse Dunning-Kruger Effect
My dream has come true, only I should have been more careful what I wished for…
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Into The Soft Zone
Where adults need to protect their fragile zone with headphones, nicotine and seclusion, kids naturally invite whatever the world serves up and use it creatively.
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Interesting Spells I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-E-D
The latest HBO show feels as random as life itself. It really shouldn’t work, and yet something keeps it all together.
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The Funny Thing With Smart
When the thermometer was invented, nobody really understood what temperature was. The same is now true of intelligence; we can measure it, but remains a mystery.
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Mode Confusion and the Future of Robot Design : Lessons from Human Factors Engineering
Human factors engineering taught us to minimise the risk for mode confusion. That’s highly pertinent when designing interaction with social robots.
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The Cost of Optimism : Philippe Squarzoni, Climate Change and the Total Perspective Vortex
I recently read two novels about gay men in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. Their reluctance to take the test reminds me of my own feelings with regards to global warming.
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Distributed Cognition
When you forget the details of some complicated concept and have to consult an external resource, that’s distributed cognition.