A Delphic pronouncement from CogSci Apps: In January 2019, You Will Find Out Why 2019 Will Not Be Like Years Before.
Author: Luc P. Beaudoin
New CogSci Apps Logo: Social Cognitive Productivity
On the CogSci Apps blog, I announced the new CogSci Apps logo! Check it out. It’s a good example of social cognitive productivity: doing knowledge work with a great graphic designer, to create a concrete logo that meets multiple very abstract requirements.
Continue reading New CogSci Apps Logo: Social Cognitive Productivity
macOS Mojave Seems to Have Fixed the PDF Rendering Problems I Described Last Year
Last year, I blogged twice about serious PDF rendering issues in macOS High Sierra (first post, second post). The problems were very significant for knowledge workers (and serious university students), because the highest quality information tends to be distributed in PDF. And if it’s not in PDF format, it often ought to be converted to PDF to be annotated and delved deeply.
Continue reading macOS Mojave Seems to Have Fixed the PDF Rendering Problems I Described Last Year
A Bit of Art for Value Pluralism
In line with my learning from art project, I try to always think of a set of works of art that are helpfully related to content I develop (or delve). This is to get more out of art than we naturally do. And it can help improve one’s understanding. The task is actually quite difficult, because most brains (including mine) do not naturally index art in this way (but I believe one can deliberately build such indexes in our brains).
Here are a few works of art that came to my mind on the topic of my recent blog post, Psychological Hedonism meets Value Pluralism: An Integrative Design-oriented perspective – CogZest. Continue reading A Bit of Art for Value Pluralism
Overcoming macOS Siri Dictation Problems with the 2018 11″ iPad Pro, 1writer and nvALT
I recently complained about the Siri dictation service on macOS being slow to load, and asked whether the problem remains in RAM with Macs that have 32-GB of RAM. I didn’t get an answer to that question. But I did get an 11″ Nov 2018 iPad Pro, which I now keep beside my desk, on, at all times while I’m working on my Mac (which is in most other respects much better for knowledge intense work than an iPad).
Psychological Hedonism Meets Value Pluralism: An Integrative Design-oriented Perspective
This week-end, I will present at a humanist meeting on “Psychological Hedonism vs. (integrative design-oriented) value pluralism: architecture-based motivation”. Psychological hedonism claims that “only pleasure or pain motivates us.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Psychological hedonism is a form of value monism (meaning one ultimate or intrinsic good). Value pluralism is the view that we have multiple, top-level, possibly incommensurable sources of motivation. Integrative design-oriented psychology is a way of understanding whole mind with methods drawn from AI (including artificial general intelligence) and philosophy. Architecture-based motivation is the idea that the mind produces many top level (intrinsic) motivators; it has motive generators.
We won’t deal much with ethical hedonism here.
I argue against psychological hedonism and in favour of value pluralism.
Does macOS Load Siri Faster in MacBook Pro with 32-GB of RAM?
In 2012, I blogged about How Dictation Benefits Cognitive Productivity. The now discontinued Dragon Dictate for Mac, on which I gave up several years ago, did have an advantage over Siri: it loaded faster. (It also was explicitly trainable.) In my consistent experience (well inference from experience) since the introduction of Siri for macOS, if Siri has not been invoked for more than a few minutes, macOS offloads Siri loads from RAM. Continue reading Does macOS Load Siri Faster in MacBook Pro with 32-GB of RAM?
What Causes Grief to Endure? Part 1: Your Turn
There are two sets of “emotions” the understanding of which are most helpful to understanding all perturbant emotions: grief and romantic love. To understand these two requires answering several questions about them. One of the questions is: what causes grief to endure? Continue reading What Causes Grief to Endure? Part 1: Your Turn
Ask Questions Before Delving (Reading, Watching or Listening to) Knowledge Resources
I argue in my Cognitive Productivity books that it is important, after superficially processing a knowledge resource (“skimming” or “surfing” it), to try to answer questions oneself that the author raises — i.e., before processing an author’s answers. This is a reading strategy that is sometimes proffered to students (at least to fortunate ones), and it has received attention from educational psychologists. Alas, in this age of over-abundance of information, it is far too easy for graduates to simply skip ahead to the author’s answer. They consequently are less likely to notice and deeply appreciate anything that is original or profound about the answer. They might think they knew it all the long. They might even fail to recognize that there is a question and an answer. They are also less likely to understand and remember the insights (if any). Moreover, they are in a weaker position to detect deep flaws in the argument.
This may seem too obvious to be blog-worthy for readers who are not educators. But keep in mind that we are all self-regulated learners, and hence self-educators. Continue reading Ask Questions Before Delving (Reading, Watching or Listening to) Knowledge Resources
Homage to Jacques Brel on the 40-year Anniversary of His Death
40 years ago tomorrow, on October 9, 1978, at 4:10 AM, Jacques Brel passed away. Wikipedia describes him thus
[Brel] was a Belgian singer, songwriter, poet, actor and director who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium and France, later throughout the world. He is considered a master of the modern chanson.
To give an example of the impact of this grand man, there are 1,400 different recorded versions in 52 different languages of his “Ne me quitte pas” song.
Here are just a few of the things that I admire about Brel:
Continue reading Homage to Jacques Brel on the 40-year Anniversary of His Death