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.

Continue reading Psychological Hedonism Meets Value Pluralism: An Integrative Design-oriented Perspective

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

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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

Updated on iBookstore: Cognitive Productivity with macOS

A couple of weeks ago, I finally managed to update my second book, Cognitive Productivity with macOS®: 7 Principles for Getting Smarter with Knowledge, on the iBookstore. The delay was due to problems with iTunes Producer, the software one uses to upload books to iBookstore. Continue reading Updated on iBookstore: Cognitive Productivity with macOS

Whiteboard Etiquette, Paper, Pens and Productivity: Responses to MPU 442 with Joe Buhlig

I thoroughly enjoyed Mac Power Users #442: Workflows with Joe Buhlig – Relay FM. Here are some of my responses to the episode. If you want others’ thoughts, check out the MPU Discourse forum, where I’ve also summarized the following.

Joe is a very productive person.

All quite relevant to CogZest and CogSci Apps themes.

Continue reading Whiteboard Etiquette, Paper, Pens and Productivity: Responses to MPU 442 with Joe Buhlig

Birthday Wishes to a Dear Relative: May You Have Your Chocolate Box and (Secular) Buddha Too

Cher —-,

Wishing you the best of what we hoped for during our irregular childhood “Cat Stevens Power Hours” together, Continue reading Birthday Wishes to a Dear Relative: May You Have Your Chocolate Box and (Secular) Buddha Too

Sapiosexual Intelligence Requires a Theory of Cognitive Motivation

Earlier today, I responded to Julia Galef’s post about cognitive laziness. My upcoming book, Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind will explore other themes related this: sapiosexuality in general and sapiosexual intelligence in particular. Continue reading Sapiosexual Intelligence Requires a Theory of Cognitive Motivation