Lecture � Society of mind

Greg Detre

Wednesday, April 02, 2003

 

wants to get rid of hand-shaking �source of 30% of all infectious diseases!

apparently Japanese have longer life-span

Hugo: evolutionary advantage of genes to age?

variation???

bacteria don�t get old and die

sharks don�t age either

may be an urban myth � but they don�t seem to get cancer

 

thurber, �why should salt suffer?� � vegetarian friend decided not to eat vegetables, leaving just salt in his diet J

 

a big part of common sense knowledge is heuristics about different types of processes to use for different types of problem

 

Push: �common sense� vs �commonsense� � the second is a technical/specialist modifier

 

Steve: problem solving vs common sense?

common sense is often what you need as the ingredients for solving a problem � problem-solving as goal-satisfaction

 

if you�re going to have a theory of memory, maybe you need a theory of forgetting

 

refce: introduction to Roget�s thesaurus

 

considers that Papert�s different ideas in French may be a result of being imprimed by Piaget

 

piaget rod task � children took a long time to learn that colour could represent different materials of different strengths

 

one of the important ways of thinking has to do with how your top-down and your bottom-up influence each other

 

seven league springy boots allow you to go really fast, but the slightest mis-step would send you hurling into a passing car J

 

C S Peirce in the 1850s � taxonomy of 4 ways of fixing beliefs � refce �The fixation of beliefs�

tenacity � I�m determining to hold onto this belief

authority � a holy figure told me to believe this

aesthetics � choose to believe things because it suits their sense of appropriateness

science � his preference

 

Frank Thomas � Disney cartoonist behind 3/7 dwarfs

people seem to prefer straight lines to parabolas of cartoon thrown objects, so long as you show the throwing motion and cut to the catching figure � that sounds implausible

 

McLeod � the physics of comics � the more real, you attribute the wrong things to it � you�re better off leaving things symbolic

 

children may use concrete language, but they seem to draw abstract symbols

e.g. 3 year-old told to draw a square and a diamond, drew a bumpy circle then a blob with points at the top and bottom � can�t draw shapes till 6 or 7

 

common sense community

forbus! � northwestern � using equations etc. to model common sense physics

ben kuijpers - texas

 

attacks cognitive science

says they don�t simulate

lack interesting function-concepts

still basing their models on old AI ideas

 

their plan is to have 3 different ideas for doing everything � neural nets can never do that

 

I don�t understand why he�s anti self-organisation

seems to have implied that kids don�t do that much self-organisation

because it�s hard/rare in nature

hmmm

 

refce: Steve Larson: Fuster � Omega model � old � �Memory and cerebral cortex�