The extensional nature of cognitive artifacts

Edwin Hutchins once said: "We are all cognitive bricoleurs–opportunistic assemblers of functional systems composed of internal and external structures". I think this taxonomy neatly addr...

Coloring Cognition

Idea: Graph coloring with finitely many colors and unspillability of the important nodes. If you’ve ever implemented a compiler for a high level language, you’d recognize this as the register allo...

Information as the core of Structuralism

Structuralism is a philosophical concept that says that all objects are defined by their relationship to other objects within the system. Although different fields have varying interpretations of s...

Branching Thought Process and Meta — A Case of Intractability

Here's a representation of a typical thought process. The outward going arrows represent the branching of a thought, while the inward coming arrows represent merging. 'Branching' in phy...

Correspondence theory of truth and Fallibilism

The provability of the existence of truth in an objective sense is one of the most fundamental problems when it comes to the study of the conceptions of truth in the field of epistemology, for the ...

What does it mean to be truly educated?

On the one hand, a child with a burnt finger knows not to touch fire ever again but on the other, a grown man with so much maturity never learns to avoid the source of his misery despite the consta...

Autobiographical wholes and the issue of knowledge

If entity A consists of sub-entities(or parts) B and C, where both the sub-entities are recognized as intelligent and creative enough to write a biography of entity A, can these be then termed as a...

Is the whole really an eternally elusive state?

Structure mappings[[Structure mapping is the cognitive technique of creating or perceiving existing correspondences between entities that exhibit analogical relationships.SM can be used as a tool t...

Self is a good model at the right level of abstraction

Non-dualism is central to many eastern contemplative traditions. And as a long time practitioner of Vipassana and as someone who subscribes to the idea of nothingness as a manifestation of a single...

Want is a lagging indicator — Constraints and Resilience

'Want' is one of the most peculiar variables when it comes to the transactional dynamics of life. Most people think that 'to want' is to have a desire to own/do and use it as an ind...

Don't Write

Sometimes I want-to-want to write. So I force myself to sit infront of my editor and write. But I cannot. A large part of it could be just laziness, but I think there is more to it. Usually, the t...

Understanding and Intractable Instantiations

Note: This articles deals only with the voluntary act of understanding. For perception, awareness, curiosity and other similar processes readers are advised to look elsewhere. Also to be noted is t...

Filtering readers and the Bayardian escape hatch - Non Reading

A good heuristic, in my opinion, to differentiate a bluffer from a real reader when having a conversation with someone about a book is to presume that they haven’t read it and establish a minute-or...

Such, Such Were The Joys - The Dawn of the Orwellian Orwell

Of the various books and essays written by Orwell, if there was only one writing of his that I could recommend, it would no doubt be "Such, Such Were The Joys". An essay that changed how ...

Language and the urge to correct

Languages in general seem to have an emergent structure, that is, they tend to evolve over time. If you take a look at the evolution of the words in the Indo-European languages, most of them seem t...

Opsimath might be the word

Opsimath: a person who begins to learn or study only late in life. Although this does not exactly capture the essence as most of us who are in the ruminate-repeat cycle at least have some sort of ...

Too nuanced to be responsible?

With the rising awareness towards complex systems and the increasing ability of people to see beyond black and white, it is only natural that people be dissatisfied with the prescriptions and look ...

• Status: Ongoing

Notes on self-studying a technical book

Disclaimer: This article deals specifically with technical concepts, mainly in the field mathematics and computer science. Readers are advised to not extrapolate it to the general idea of technical...

Everyone should create their own "Everything I know" series

I was just browsing through Hacker News and stumbled upon this fantastic [[lecture series by Buckminster Fuller::https://archive.org/details/buckminsterfuller]] in which he talks about everything h...

Sincere imitation can be authentic - William Morris

William Morris describing the essence of authenticity: "First. Your vessel must be of a convenient shape for its purpose. Second. Its shape must show the greatest advantage of the plastic ...

WIAN is what is actually needed

Late last year I was accidentally introduced to the world of Xerox PARC by some people I follow on Twitter and ever since then there has not been a single day that has gone by without me pondering ...

Everyone should have a project that they control 100% of

To improve as a programmer, every programmer whether working independently or in an organization should at least have one project that they control 100% of, and it doesn't matter if it is your ...

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Notes on how to read better

This is going to be a prescriptive post about reading, as most of these are either from my own experiences or from having benefited from reading interesting books that directly/indirectly hint at c...

Dark mode adoption might be a function of cognitive exhaustion

Sensitivity to brightness can occur due to number of issues ranging from corneal issues like infections and abrasions, to dry eye, to concussions, to allergies; eg: Keratoconus, Uveitis, Keratitis,...

Premature external validation of estimated efforts for a personal projects can reduce potentialities

It has become increasingly common for people these days owing to the increased exposure to a larger world through QA based social media platforms to prematurely ask for advices on the viability of ...

Reading the material to completion over interest-based pickups-n-drops

It is becoming common these days among people to preach dropping and picking up a book based on interest, but if you seriously want to express your opinion on the material or the person who has wri...

Humility is the knowing of the epistemic gap

Humility is the knowing that you don't know a lot of things not a false pretension to deceive people into praising you. The contemporary view of humility seems to be to pretend as if one knew ...

Temporally inconsistent ethical values govern PC Culture

Listening to all the discourses online that have been happening in recent times, I am starting to feel that there is more to it than just the misunderstanding that is caused due to the improper usa...

Notes on how to speak better by Prof Patrick Winston

This is probably one of the most interesting videos I've seen this week. The interesting thing about this lecture by Prof Patrick Winston is that although it is titled "How to speak",...

Comparison based on accomplishment does not have a baseline

I would just note that you have an image of some "great X" that you are trying to live up to, when really, there is no frame of reference to standardize a measure for X. Point being you a...

Creativity is a quality without a name

Note: This is also a book review of The Timeless Way of Building. I have said this time and again, in various forms and various places and I will say it again, if there is anything that I find sol...

Kantian metaphysics and Heideggerian Kant

Kant has always had the tendency to use the term Metaphysics in a very restricted sense, that is, in the sense of the doctrine dealing with the supra-sensible realities such as GOD, but how well ca...

The Value of Philosophy

In the last chapter of this classic — "The problems of Philosophy" — Russell discusses the plight of the prejudice laden society by showing how the material-driven 'practical' men...

Aphorisms and Poetry - James Richardson

Has there ever been a form of communication so effective as poetry, in that, one could convey the feelings without the need for explaining it? I mean when you think of it, things like music and pai...

Getting started with causality

Most of us are well aware of the phrase "correlation is not causation" but only few of us are capable of seeing past our biases. In order to spot the biases, the bias detection engine in ...

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Causal Inference — A Guide to Causality

This is a series of 5 posts starting from basics to intermediate concepts in causality: [[Getting started with causality]] [[Potential outcomes, Counterfactuals, and their Links]]...

Action cures fear v I fear action - A false dichotomy?

I have been thinking about this for almost a month now, and I am still not sure if this is even a legitimate comparison. In fact, on one level this may seem like a paradoxical statement, a deadlock...

For the new decade

“I say nothing works anymore, but I get up and it’s tomorrow”—James Richardson ,Vectors And it is tomorrow. Everything is fine, I feel much better, I see a ray of hope. There are emotions, there ...

Going beyond the flatlands of rationality

The thought of flatland brings almost automatically the thought of Edwin Abbott, and for two very good reasons. To begin with, it was the first of its kind i.e. a mathematical fiction. Secondly, an...

Traditions are continued, not preserved

When people talk about the rich heritage of some religious tradition, they are almost always talking about how good their community has been at continuing the tradition and not necessarily at prese...

Are we selectively gullible, or Are they selectively masterful?

Why do we switch to new items when the old ones are just fine? And why do we do it only in some situations but not in others? You don’t like to eat with the same fork if one of the prongs is sligh...

Experts and their social science

Every morning you open the science column of a newspaper, you have a new research finding – I don’t remember clearly if it was last week that I saw an article on a prestigious newspaper citing some...

Why unsolicited advice is basically an experiment

I’ve come to realize that unsolicited advice is basically an experiment conducted on the “advisee” by the “adviser”. It is possible that the “adviser” isn’t even aware of this being an inherent mot...

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How to improve your attention span and its benefits on mental well being?

William James, The father of American psychology in his groundbreaking book from 1890 “The principles of psychology” wrote “Everyone knows what attention is. Attention is the taking possession ...