Cognition

[2024-05-20 Mon]

1. microdecisions

   1. notice microdecisions, make these choices (or variations) consciously, treat them as mini-experiments

   2. Eventually you will discern which strategies yield systematically better outcomes

   3. Each inflection point you notice is an opportunity to observe your ingrained cognitive reflexes and try out new moves

2. external scaffolds

   1. aka tools for thought

   2. stuff people use to think because their brain is a widdle too small hahahah (just kidding)

   3. Pen and paper and digital notes (search functionality is a lifesaver)

   4. spaced repetition

   5. conversations with people

      1. See Tsvi's description about this, and Johannes' thoughts on this

   6. conversations with AIs

   7. Tsvi calls these parathesizers

   8. supposedly, formats you externalize your thinking have differential cognitive enhancements

      1. spreadsheets and n-d sheets

         1. There still does not seem to exist a viable n-dimension sheet browser

         2. Still, there's visidata and that's probably the best thing we have right now when it comes to a scaffold that involves sheets

      2. outline trees

         1. org-mode

            1. Note: emacs has been probably the most powerful tool I have when interfacing with a computer system, and when it comes to thinking

3. You know, one thing I don't seem to take into account as much is the 'cost of cognition'

   1. In general, there's a cost to spending too much optimization power on something that isn't worth that much optimization power (when you take into account global context)

4. labeling patterns and reifying them because making such distinctions has value, seems like a good idea

   1. Doing this bottom up instead of top down preserves the value of labels slicing reality, instead of your labels not having utility because they aren't created with the intention of making certain distinctions

      1. Oh, this is important! Labels have utility only to the extent that they are useful for making distinctions

      2. Zack wrote about this: The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions ★ The Scintillating But …

   2. I guess Tsvi also wrote about this here: The possible shared Craft of deliberate Lexicogenesis

   3. Here's an interesting insight: lexicogenesis usually is downstream of communication, since you want to communicate distinctions to people.

      1. And this also has a side-effect of making it easier for you to think about things and grab onto things

      2. I mean, I guess useful distinction / lexicogenesis would be downstream of you having distinctions already clear in your head

         1. That is, I believe that lexicogenesis comes after noticing distinctions

         2. Words are pointers to concepts, and doing a top-down "seeing like a state" thing with words will not lead to much insight

         3. Even so, I guess one could have a babble-prune for the words they come up with, and making too many words to grasp distinctions seems better than making too little words

      3. If this is the case, it seems likely that conversations with other people, or collaboration, may be extremely useful for this kind of research

5. I wonder what sort of cognitive mechanisms would be extremely useful for people who have attention problems such as ADHD

   1. To be honest, being unmedicated and having ADHD is an extremely extremely not great experiences

   2. I expect that having an issue of hyperfocusing is actually easier to deal with than ADHD

   3. But anyway, both issues can benefit from externally scheduled reorientations, such as using timers

      1. I use timers a lot when cooking, for example

6. The reason that dialogues are easy and writing essays is not as easy, is probably because of a concrete model of the audience (one person) and a fast feedback loop to course correct

   1. Also, relying on context for communication

7. Books!

   1. Good books and good pedagogy serve as externalized artifacts that are a product of significant amount of (hopefully good) cognition and organized in a way that you can easily parse it