Author: Luc P. Beaudoin

Head of CogZest. Author of Cognitive Productivity books. Co-founder of CogSci Apps Corp. Adjunct Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University. Why, Where, and What I Write. See About Me for more information.

Announcing CogZest’s Advisory Board

CogZest’s mission is to extend and use broad cognitive science to help knowledge workers thrive in the sea of knowledge. More precisely, we aim to help people become more effective at using knowledge and technology to solve problems, develop products (including new knowledge) and to develop themselves. We lead by example, practicing what we preach.

Our mission, however, is too grand to be accomplished alone. Indeed, we have benefited from deeply insightful help over the years.

Today, I am pleased to announce the formation of the CogZest Advisory Board. Continue reading Announcing CogZest’s Advisory Board

Media Responses to the Cognitive Shuffle: Much Ado about a Research Programme

My R&D on sleep onset and insomnia (including the cognitive shuffle / serial diverse imagining) has received several waves of media attention.  The last one started c. 10 days ago with the May edition of O Magazine (the print edition of Oprah), and then went crazy from there. Last week, I accepted over 20 interview invitations from TV stations, radio stations, web sites, and a magazine who were curious about this topic. Continue reading Media Responses to the Cognitive Shuffle: Much Ado about a Research Programme

On Using Fiction and Non-Fiction When Feeling Guilty

At the Vancouver Arts Club on Friday, I attended the emotion-inducing play, Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches. (Its wikipedia page. One of the characters, Louis Ironson, is a Jewish homosexual consumed by anxiety and guilt. Today, I used this character to reflect upon imperfection, the emotions of guilt, and self-directed learning. I wondered in particular how one can use feelings of guilt and fiction/non-fiction to become more effective. This blog post touches briefly on this problem. Continue reading On Using Fiction and Non-Fiction When Feeling Guilty

The Late 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: Comments on the Mac and My Research to Purchase It

Because so many people have complained that the late 2016 MacBook Pro does not support legacy interfaces (except for the 3.5 mm microphone jack), I thought I should write a blog post to give you my impression of this new notebook, which is on the whole quite positive.

Continue reading The Late 2016 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: Comments on the Mac and My Research to Purchase It

Easy on The Inference Trigger, Dear Voting Reader

WARNING! Don’t like or comment on this Rationally Speaking podcast episode unless you’ve listened to it, or read the transcript or the book — and given it some thought; otherwise, it might count as evidence that you shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Continue reading Easy on The Inference Trigger, Dear Voting Reader

Perturbance: Understanding Why Robots Will Have High-Order Emotions Matters to Psychology

Yesterday, Drs. Sylwia Hyniewska, Eva Hudlicka and I submitted a paper for the AISB-2017 Symposium on Computational Modelling of Emotion: Theory and Applications. The title of our paper is “Perturbance: Unifying research on emotion, intrusive mentation and other psychological phenomena with AI”. Continue reading Perturbance: Understanding Why Robots Will Have High-Order Emotions Matters to Psychology

Challenge and Workshop in 12th IEEE Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2017)

The name, CogZest, is a blend of “Cognition” and “Zest”, where “Zest” representing affect. Here, we believe that deep learning is not merely a matter of acquiring dry knowledge. It also means learning to perceive and act upon value in a well informed manner. As such, at CogZest we also read, research and publish about affect.

If you are particularly interested in emotion, we encourage you to consider attending the following challenges and workshops organized by Dr. Sylwia Hyniewska, an expert in affective science in general and perception of emotions from faces in particular. Continue reading Challenge and Workshop in 12th IEEE Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG 2017)